Title: The Roof Beneath Their Feet
Author: Geetanjali Shree
Pages: 176
Publisher: HarperPerennial
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About the book: Geetanjali Shree’s engaging book The Roof Beneath their Feet weaves together the past and present while revealing important truths. Themes like love, sorrow, and friendship, the weight of unsaid emotions, and the layers hidden beneath the book’s intriguing title are all explored in depth in Shree. Roofs hold a special place in this exquisitely written book; they are made for wild animals, romance, and play, and they serve as locations to dry pickles and grains while sharing rumours about discreet caresses. But most importantly, they are libertarian spaces. In The Roof Beneath their Feet, Chachcho and Lalna use the roofs over their homes to forge a lasting bond. Lalna suddenly needs to depart one day and won’t be able to return until after Chachcho’s death. Chachcho’s nephew struggles to piece together his recollections of the two ladies, one of whom is his mother, amidst rumours and neighbourhood chitchat.
Get a glimpse of the roofs Chachcho and Lalna walk on by reading this captivating excerpt from The Roof Beneath their Feet.
About the author: Four novels—Mai, Tirohit, Hamara Sheher Us Baras, and Khali Jagah—as well as two collections of short tales in Hindi have been authored by Geetanjali Shree. Between Two Worlds: An Intellectual Biography of Premchand is another publication to her credit. In addition to Gujarati, her stories have been translated into English, German, Serbian, and Japanese. In Pakistan, her book Khali Jagah was translated into Urdu, and it is currently being translated into English. In 2000, Mai’s English translation made the Hutch-Crossword Translation Award shortlist. For her contributions to Hindi literature, she has been honoured with the Indu Sharma Katha Sammaan, Hindi Akademi Sahityakar Sammaan, and Dwijdev Sammaan.