Leaving Malabar Hill

Set during the final days of the British Raj, Leaving Malabar Hill is the story of betrayal and espionage, with a marriage between a Brooklyn Jewish writer and an Indian-Jain physician at the center. While ratcheting communal tensions put India on edge, the woman gets embroiled in an affair with an Irgun operative and is unknowingly swept into an arms trafficking scheme and a terrorist plot to bomb British clubs in Bombay and Jerusalem.

Diane Mehta grew up in Bombay and moved to the States when she was seven, the product of a marriage between a Brooklyn Jew and an Indian-Jain physician. Leaving Malabar Hill is loosely based on that marriage, but takes place during an earlier era of Indian history, and is heightened with a terrorist plot and extramarital affair. It unfolds on the cusp of Indian Independence and Israeli statehood.

The novel explores the difficulties of an upper middle class Jewish and Jain family struggling to cope amid the political upheaval of Partition. The major themes are Jewish exile and the expat life, the dynamics of love between people from two psychologically different cultures, and the moral uncertainties of being a freedom fighter versus a terrorist in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb. The characters all seek to understand, and offer variations on, what it means to be Jewish, Jain, Hindu, and Muslim. The cross-culturalization of the characters echoes the mixed nature of Bombay itself, a city built on migration, clashing interests, and increasingly divided sense of nationality.

Driving the story of the novel are the tensions that war and massive structural change bring about, the work of loving and forgiveness, the difficulty of being an educated or ambitious woman and feminist in the forties, and the yearning to be an artist.

About the author

Diane Mehta is the author of two poetry collections, Tiny Extravaganzas and Forest with Castanets. She publishes poetry, essays, and criticism for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Harvard Review. She was born in Frankfurt, grew up in Bombay and New Jersey, studied in Boston, and now makes her home in New York City.

Summary

Set during the final days of the British Raj, Leaving Malabar Hill is the story of betrayal and espionage, with a marriage between a Brooklyn Jewish writer and an Indian-Jain physician at the center. While ratcheting communal tensions put India on edge, the woman gets embroiled in an affair with an Irgun operative and is unknowingly swept into an arms trafficking scheme and a terrorist plot to bomb British clubs in Bombay and Jerusalem.

Diane Mehta grew up in Bombay and moved to the States when she was seven, the product of a marriage between a Brooklyn Jew and an Indian-Jain physician. Leaving Malabar Hill is loosely based on that marriage, but takes place during an earlier era of Indian history, and is heightened with a terrorist plot and extramarital affair. It unfolds on the cusp of Indian Independence and Israeli statehood.

The novel explores the difficulties of an upper middle class Jewish and Jain family struggling to cope amid the political upheaval of Partition. The major themes are Jewish exile and the expat life, the dynamics of love between people from two psychologically different cultures, and the moral uncertainties of being a freedom fighter versus a terrorist in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb. The characters all seek to understand, and offer variations on, what it means to be Jewish, Jain, Hindu, and Muslim. The cross-culturalization of the characters echoes the mixed nature of Bombay itself, a city built on migration, clashing interests, and increasingly divided sense of nationality.

Driving the story of the novel are the tensions that war and massive structural change bring about, the work of loving and forgiveness, the difficulty of being an educated or ambitious woman and feminist in the forties, and the yearning to be an artist.

Foreword

• Leverage authors' previous publications and literary achievements: She is the author of two poetry collections, Tiny Extravaganzas (Arrowsmith Press, 2023), and Forest with Castanets (Four Way, 2019). Her work has been recognized by the Peter Heinegg Literary Award, the Café Royal Cultural Foundation, a Kirby-Mewshaw fellowship at Civitella Ranieri, and a fellowship at Yaddo. She was the founding managing editor of A Public Space, launched and edited Glossolalia for PEN America to publish writing from traditionally underrepresented languages, and was executive nonfiction editor for Guernica. She publishes poetry, essays, and criticism for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Notre Dame Review, American Poetry Review, and A Public Space.


• Pitch op-eds, excerpts, and reviews to publications including London Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, LA Times, NYTBR,NYRB, Jewish Book Council, Jewish Currents, Jewish Review of Books, Tablet Magazine, Lilith Magazine, LitHub, Poets & Writers, Scroll India, The Guardian, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, NPR, The New Yorker, various academic journals (Prairie Schooner, VQR, Kenyon Review, Agni, Harvard, Missouri, American Poetry Review), The Forward, Brooklyn Rail, Ms. Magazine.

Product details

• Authors: Diane Mehta
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 23.04.2024, delayed
• EAN: 9781682196007
• ISBN: 978-1-68219-600-7
• No. of pages: 200
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; FICTION / Women, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Jewish, Feminism & feminist theory, FICTION / Feminist, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary