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Thrity Umrigar. Photograph courtesy Thrity Umrigar-
Honor: A Conversation with Thrity Umrigar
March 26, 2022
Honor is a riveting novel that transports readers to an India where interfaith marriage between Muslims and Hindus animates deep religious polarization.
Honor: A Conversation with Thrity Umrigar March 26, 2022
Best-selling and award-winning Thrity Umrigar describes her journey to becoming a published author and the spirit of India that she felt as she was coming of age in the 1970s.  A time she described where religious diversity was valued as a strength and central to the identity of being Indian.  The national identity belonged to all regardless of religion in stark contrast to the rise of ethnoreligious extremism and religious polarization today. 

Then Umrigar shares how a series of articles by New York Times writer Ellen Barry detailing the plight of women in rural India inspired her latest novel.  She describes the two main characters and the unique dynamics in the relationship that upend expectations and ideas about wisdom and knowledge.  The heroine for Umrigar is the one who, against all taboos and odds, claims her right to love.

Finally, Umrigar discusses why she believes the opposition to interfaith marriage has become the third rail in the political battles unfolding in India today and animates the tensions that trace back to the violence of partition.

Thrity Umrigar, best-selling author of 10 novels including — most recently Honor from Algonquin Books — and two children's picture books. She is a Distinguished University Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Honor by Thrity Umrigar-courtesy Albonwuin Books
Honor
Algonquin Books




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