The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A matriarch’s enigmatic quest

- By Anjali Enjeti

For the first 400 pages of Geetanjali Shree’s epic novel “Tomb of Sand,” winner of the 2022 Internatio­nal Booker Prize, our animated unnamed narrator leads readers on a kind of scavenger hunt. We are regaled with tales about the family of Ma, an 80-year-old matriarch living in northern India whose grief from the recent loss of her husband leaves her bedridden in her son Bade’s bungalow.

Facing the wall, Ma lies in a samadhi, which Shree defines as a deeply meditative state, self-immolation by entombment, or a place of entombment.

As Ma appears to slip into the wall’s cracks, her family grows increasing­ly desperate. Bade directs his frustratio­n toward everyone else in the household. His wife, Bahu, receives advice about how to care for Ma from their odd adult child, Overseas Son, who phones frequently from Australia.

But Ma is not in a state of decline. She is a cocooned caterpilla­r in the midst of a metamorpho­sis and on the verge of rebirth.

When Overseas Son gifts his grandmothe­r a golden cane with butterflie­s, Ma begins to give away most of her worldly possession­s, and then briefly disappears. Upon her return, she moves in with Beti, busies herself with gardening, and deepens her friendship with Rosie Bua, a local hijra and entreprene­ur, who knows and understand­s Ma in a way that perplexes her own children. (The word hijra has no direct translatio­n in English, but refers to a third gender)

“Tomb of Sand” is an engrossing fable about an octogenari­an’s liberation from her decades-long roles as wife and mother, and her pursuit of a past life she has largely kept secret from her family. Ma’s quest is rooted in the 1947 Partition of the subcontine­nt, the dawn of two nations, India and Pakistan, and the border between them that incites widespread communal violence and rips loved ones apart.

Shree scrupulous­ly examines the demarcatio­n between life and death, mother and daughter, past and present, and how grief and memory, when harnessed, have the power to cultivate long lost connection­s. The narrator’s witty observatio­ns and lengthy humorous asides add to the breadth and depth of this rich novel.

We are reminded throughout “Tomb of Sand” that not every question has an answer, not every mystery has a resolution. “The truth of the matter is this: that not all its facets are revealed at once. Some will never be known.” But for the reader who wades in Shree’s luminous prose, the book’s threads braid into a single, vivid tapestry.

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“Tomb of Sand” by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell HarperVia, 624 pages, $29.99
FICTION “Tomb of Sand” by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell HarperVia, 624 pages, $29.99

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