The Space Between Us: A Novel (p.S.) [Paperback]

“This is a story intimately and compassionately toldagainst the sensuous background of everyday life in Bombay.” —Washington Post Book World
 
“Bracingly honest.”—New York Times Book Review
 
The author ofBombay Time,If Today Be Sweet, and The Weight of Heaven, Thrity Umrigar is at adept andcompelling inThe Space Between Us—vividlycapturing the social struggles of modern India in a luminous, addictivelyreadable novel of honor, tradition, class, gender, and family. A portrayal oftwo woman discovering an emotional rapport as they struggle against theconfines of a rigid caste system, Umrigar’scaptivating second novel echoes the timeless intensity of ZoraNeale Hurston’sTheir Eyes Were WatchingGod, Betty Smith’sA Tree Grows inBrooklyn, and Barbara Kingsolver’sThePoisonwood Bible—a quintessential triumph of modern literary fiction.

Poignant, evocative, and unforgettable,The Space Between Usis an intimate portrait of a distant yet familiar world. Set in modern-day India, it is the story of two compelling and achingly real women: Sera Dubash, an upper-middle-class Parsi housewife whose opulent surroundings hide the shame and disappointment of her abusive marriage, and Bhima, a stoic illiterate hardened by a life of despair and loss, who has worked in the Dubash household for more than twenty years. A powerful and perceptive literary masterwork, author Thrity Umrigar's extraordinary novel demonstrates how the lives of the rich and poor are intrinsically connected yet vastly removed from each other, and how the strong bonds of womanhood are eternally opposed by the divisions of class and culture.