Sidhwa Authors Water

A unique collaboration between a film maker and a novelist, both known for their masterful portraits of the South Asian subcontinent, has taken place recently.
Bapsi Sidhwa, ”Pakistan’s finest English-language novelists” (New York Times), is the author of Water, a new novel based on Deepa Mehta’s film of the same name. The critically-acclaimed film and the book release in Los Angeles on April 28. The film will be in US cities through June and is distributed by Fox Searchlight. The book is available at Borders Bookstore and other stores nationwide, as well as on www.milkweed.org. Set in 1938 colonial India against the backdrop of Mahatma Gandhi’s rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, a child-bride who is abandoned at a widows’ ashram after the death of her husband. The impish girl disrupts daily life in the ashram and becomes a catalyst for change in the lives of the widows, including her friend, the beautiful widow-prostitute Kalyani, and her protector, Shakuntala, who discovers her hidden power.

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