Shobha Rao – författare

In An Unrestored Woman, the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 cuts a jagged path through the lives of ordinary women and men, leaving ripples of sorrow through time and space. Each couplet of stories spans the Indian subcontinent, from refugee camps and torched trains to the spacious verandas of the British Raj, and billows into the wider world. An old woman recounts the murdering of what was most precious to her, and the many small cuts that led her to that act. A girl forced into prostitution wields patience as deftly as a weapon, and manages to escape her fate. An Indian servant falls in love with his employer, and spins a twisted web of deceit.The characters in these fearless stories stumble - occasionally towards love, more often towards survival - and find that history, above all, is their truest and greatest opponent. And what emerges, in the midst of newly erected barriers, boundaries, and nations, is a journey into the centre of the only place that matters - the human heart.

'A treat for Ferrante fans, exploring the bonds of friendship and how female ambition beats against the strictures of poverty and patriarchal societies' Huffington PostAn electrifying debut novel - the story of the unbreakable bond between two girls driven apart, and their journeys across continents to find each other again.Poornima and Savitha, born in poverty, have known little kindness in their lives until they meet as teenagers. When an act of devastating cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend.Alternating between the girls' perspectives as they face apparently insurmountable obstacles on their travels through the darkest corners of India's underworld and across an ocean, Girls Burn Brighter introduces two heroines who refuse to lose the hope that burns within.