Truth/Untruth

A trenchant darkly humorous and unsentimental look at Calcutta society. Set in Calcutta in the mid-1980s Truth/Untruth is a fast-paced thriller built around the death of the pregnant Jamuna—a maid in a newly affluent residential apartment complex—and Arjun the upwardly mobile businessman who seduced her. Packed with a cast of colorful characters this novel is a trenchant darkly humorous and unsentimental look at the different segments of Calcutta society: from the middle-class culture vultures to the unscrupulous “promoter” class and the domestic helpers and slum goons who form an intrinsic part of the city’s life. All are implicated in a complex web of guilt and bizarre twists and turns. Sex lies death—the great modernist themes—run like a thread through this book exposing societal greed lust corruption and moral hypocrisy with a sardonic tone that spares none. An unusual novel by an author who is otherwise known for her hard-hitting activist-feminist stories Truth/Untruth underlines the exploitative vicious cycle that defines urban relations between the haves and have-nots.