TITLE A Slight Angle
AUTHOR Ruth Vanita
GENRE Fiction
Publisher Viking (Penguin Random House India)
Cost Rs 399

Ruth Vanita’s new novel A Slight Angle is set in the decade of the 1920s pre-independence India. As its central theme, Vanita explores human desires that went unaccounted for in the freedom song of an emerging nation. We follow the lives of young protagonists: Sheela, Hemlata, Sharad, Abhik, Kanta, Robin and Rita. Each deviates from the path their elders have carved for them and stand as models of modern India. Sheela chooses to reject marriage; Kanta and Robin are in love and break the confines of religion and caste; Sharad is attracted to his professor Abhik Roy at the University of Delhi; Rita is living the life of a star.