Someone Else's Garden: A Novel

In the vein of Thrity Umrigar’s The Space Between Us, Dipika Rai’s soulful debut novel is a moving multi-generational tale of mothers and daughters in rural India struggling to break free of the social traditions fencing them in. Standing out among works by Shobhan Bantwal, Chitra Divakaruni, and other emerging Indian writers, Rai’s Someone Else’s Garden offers a rare look at life in the Indian countryside, far from the more well-trafficked literary settings of New Delhi and Mumbai, in an evocative, atmospheric story of one woman’s soulful fight to take control of her life. |

The eldest of seven children,born low-caste and female in rural India,Mamta is abused and rejected by a father whocan see no reason to “water someone else’s garden” until ahusband is found for her. Seeking escape in matrimony, Mamta beginsher wedded life with hope—but is soon forced to flee her village and thehorrors of her arranged marriage to the bustle of a small city. Saved from becomingone of the nameless and faceless millions of rejected humanity by thesalvation of sublime love, Mamta struggles to find a precarious state ofacceptance and make peace with her past.

Powerfully affecting and uplifting, set against a vivid and colorful backgroundof Eastern life, Dipika Rai’s Someone Else’s Garden transcends geographicaldivides and cultural chasms to brilliantly expose the commonalityof the human condition, compelling us to seek answerswithin ourselves to humanity’s eternalquestions: Is life random?Do we have a destiny?

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“Beautifully written. . . . [With] depth of feeling.” - Publishers Weekly

“In the manner of Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, this is a multigenerational tale of Indian life. . . . A universal story of good-versus-evil and tradition-versus-modernity as well as of the redemptive power of belief.” - Booklist

“Dipika Rai turns rural India into a setting for an epic tale of love and loss that feels timeless and familiar.” - Jamal Mahjoub, author of The Drift Latitudes and Travelling with Djinns

“A brave and ambitious first novel set in rural India, Someone Else’s Garden deals frankly with the brutality faced by many women and tells the story of how one woman achieves redemption.” - Sam Miller, author of Delhi, Adventures in a Megacity