Novel
Jasmine
Bharati Mukherjee · 1989
Synopsis
Widowed at seventeen in the Punjab village where she was born, Jyoti seems destined for a life of seclusion. She leaves nonetheless, enters the United States illegally and passes through more dangerous worlds, changing her name at every stage. A few years later, having become Jane Ripplemeyer in Iowa, she is expecting the child of a middle-aged banker and is raising a young Vietnamese refugee whom they have adopted, remembering what she has been through since her childhood marked by the aftermath of Partition.
Context
The novel appeared in New York in 1989, a year after the short story collection that had earned its author a major American prize. She refused to be classed among Indian writers and said she wrote about the feelings of the new pioneers of America. She held the immigration narrative to be the epic of this millennium. It remains her best-known book. It appeared in French as early as 1990 from Alinéa, then in Folio.
Who it is for
A short novel, which exists in French. The narrator moves from one period to another and from one name to another without warning.
Prizes and reception
The book for which its author is still read, studied as a major novel of the South Asian diaspora.
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