It examines gender roles, ideas of proprietorship over women, discrimination and violence that’s both mental and physical. Inspired by Ellen Barry’s news articles about India in the New York Times, Honor is a poignant and tender tale of love, hope, betrayal, faith, sacrifice and notions of honour in a society. She is “filled with an intense desire to study Mohan, like learning a foreign language that would open up new vistas.” Mohan taking her hand in his makes her cry harder because of “everything that gesture telegraphed - sympathy, solidarity, caring.” Author Thrity Umrigar (Laura Watilo Blake) The budding romance between Smita and Mohan, the Indian man she meets while on assignment and finds herself drawn to, is a parallel thread. Shame and scandal are black, Betrayal is black. Meena recounts her sister’s assertion that the “true colour of the world” is the green of trees and the blue of skies while “anger is black. Through this documenting of human bias, prejudice, violence, caste discrimination and the divisions of faith, Umrigar paints an emotive landscape of familial ties.

Umrigar deftly ties together disparate elements and sub plots spread across time zones and the divide between rural and urban India as she also exposes the fault lines within a seemingly progressive city. The narrative voice is firmly female and moves from Smita to Meena who recounts the tender moments she shared with Abdul, the victim of a brutal “honour killing”. (Arun Sharma/Hindustan Times) 336pp, ₹1802 Algonquin Books Safe houses shelter inter caste and inter faith couples who are in danger of being attacked by their families. A young married couple at a government safe house in Rohtak, Haryana in July 2015. As she grows from an unwilling bystander reluctant to cover a story to a deeply involved champion of Meena’s rights, Smita goes through an emotional journey that brings her face-to-face with judicial, social and individual failures. As she follows the case of Meena, a Hindu woman attacked and ostracized by her own family and village for marrying a Muslim man, Abdul, Smita comes face to face with complex social norms and, in the process, pieces together a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of her own past. Smita, an Indian-American journalist, whose family had moved from Mumbai with no intention of ever returning, reluctantly goes back to India to cover a story.

Honor book by thrity umrigar