Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Books

Sudha Kulkarni was forging a career as TELCO's first woman engineer when she met the serious, idealistic and brilliant Narayana Murthy, and they fell in love. For the first time comes the story of their early years - from their courtship to Infosys's founding years, from their marriage to parenthood - told by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. What drew them together and kept them bound tightly through the challenges and loneliness they faced? What was it like to create a startup during the license raj, when there were no VCs, and entrepreneurship was regarded as a dirty word? How did Sudha Murty balance being a career woman, a mother and a startup wife? How did Narayana Murthy's obsession affect himself and his family? Taking us deep inside the minds, hearts and values of the Murthys, with exclusive access to them, Divakaruni tells their story with emotional depth, bringing them and their worlds vividly alive.

Takes us back to a time that is half-history, half-myth, and wholly magical. Narrated by Panchaali, the wife of the five Pandava brothers, this book gives a woman's take on the timeless tale that is the Mahabharata.

The book is based on the Indian epic The Ramayan, which she re-tells from the point of the main female character, Sita.

In a dingy shack in the less-than-desirable Indian neighborhood he calls home, twelve-year-old Anand is entrusted with a conch shell that possesses mystical powers. His task is to return the shell to its rightful home many hundreds of miles away. Accompanying him are Nisha, a headstrong but resourceful child of the streets, and a mysterious man of indeterminate age and surprising resources named Abadhyatta. His quest will take him farther from home than he's ever been and will teach him more than he ever imagined -- and it will force him to make a poignant decision that will change him forever.

During the partition of British India in 1947, three sisters find themselves separated from each other after their father, a well-respected doctor, is killed during a riot and their neighbors turn against them.

She rose from commoner to become the last reigning queen of India's Sikh Empire. In this dazzling novel, based on true-life events, bestselling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni presents the unforgettable story of Jindan, who transformed herself from daughter of the royal kennel keeper to powerful monarch. Sharp-eyed, stubborn, and passionate, Jindan was known for her beauty. When she caught the eye of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, she was elevated to royalty, becoming his youngest and last queen--and his favorite. And when her son, barely six years old, unexpectedly inherited the throne, Jindan assumed the regency. She transformed herself from pampered wife to warrior ruler, determined to protect her people and her son's birthright from the encroaching British Empire. Defying tradition, she stepped out of the zenana, cast aside the veil, and conducted state business in public, inspiring her subjects in two wars. Her power and influence were so formidable that the British, fearing an uprising, robbed the rebel queen of everything she had, but nothing crushed her indomitable will. An exquisite love story of a king and a commoner, a cautionary tale about loyalty and betrayal, a powerful parable of the indestructible bond between mother and child, and an inspiration for our times, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's novel brings alive one of the most fearless women of the nineteenth century, one whose story cries out to be told.

Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family; her cousin Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of the family. Sudha is as beautiful, tenderhearted, and serious as Anju is plain, whip-smart, and defiant. Yet since the day they were born, Sudha and Anju have been bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend.The cousins' bond is shattered, however, when Sudha learns a dark family secret. Urged into arranged marriages, their lives take sudden, opposite turns: Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household, while Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets. Then tragedy strikes them both, and the women discover that, despite the distance that has grown between them, they have only each other to turn to. Set in the two worlds of India and America, this is an exceptionally moving novel of love, friendship, and compelling courage.

Vande Mataram! The Song Of The Freedom Fighters Is Ringing In The Countryside. It Is 1939. In The Little Village Of Shona Gram In Bengal, Neela Hears About How The Freedom Fighters Will Stop At Nothing Till They Send The British Back. The Day After Her Sister S Wedding, Her Father Decides To Go To Calcutta And Join A Protest March Called By The Congress. He Promises To Be Back In A Week. But When Three Weeks Go By And There Is Still No Sign Of Him, Neela Decides To Take Matters Into Her Hand. Dressed As A Wandering Minstrel, She Arrives In Calcutta. There She Befriends Bimala, The Rich Daughter Of A Judge And Cousin Of Samar, A Young Freedom Fighter Neela Had Rescued From The Police In Her Village. They Begin A Desperate Search For Her Father And Get To Know He Is In Jail And That He Will Be Deported To The Andaman Islands In A Few Days. Neela Has To Free Her Father Before That. But Can A Twelve-Year-Old Girl Outwit The Mighty British Empire? Set In A Dramatic Period In India S History, This Racy Adventure Will Have You Turning The Pages To Find Out If Neela Finally Manages To Succeed In Her Mission Age Group Of Target Audience: 9+

In nine poignant stories spiked with humor and intelligence, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni captures lives at crossroad moments–caught between past and present, home and abroad, tradition and fresh experience. A widow in California, recently arrived from India, struggles to adapt to a world in which neighbors are strangers and her domestic skills are deemed superfluous in the award-winning “Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter.” In “The Intelligence of Wild Things,” a woman from Sacramento visits her brother in Vermont to inform him that back in Calcutta their mother is dying. And in the title story, a painter looks to ancient myth and the example of her grandmother for help in navigating her first real crisis of faith. Knowing, compassionate and expertly rendered, the stories in The Unknown Errors of Our Lives depict the eternal struggle to find a balance between the pull of home and the allure of change.

The powerful new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spices.