Inside the Mirror -- Parul Kapur, Paperback

Winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel

In 1950s Bombay, Jaya Malhotra studies medicine at the direction of her father, a champion of women's education who assumes the right to choose his daughters' vocations. A talented painter drawn to the city's dynamic new modern art movement, Jaya is driven by her desire to express both the pain and extraordinary force of life of a nation rising from the devastation of British rule. Her twin sister, Kamlesh, a passionate student of Bharata Natyam dance, complies with her father's decision that she become a schoolteacher while secretly pursuing forbidden dreams of dancing onstage and in the movies.

When Jaya moves out of her family home to live with a woman mentor, she suffers grievous consequences as a rare woman in the men's domain of art. Not only does her departure from home threaten her family's standing and crush her reputation; Jaya loses a vital connection to Kamlesh.

Winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel, Parul Kapur's Inside the Mirror is set in the aftermath of colonialism, as an impoverished India struggles to remake itself into a modern state. Jaya's story encompasses art, history, political revolt, love, and women's ambition to seize their own power.

Parul Kapur was born in Assam, India, grew up in the United States, and lives in Atlanta. She is a fiction writer, journalist, and literary critic whose writing has appeared in a number of publications, including Ploughshares, Pleiades, the New Yorker, Art in America, Guernica, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Paris Review. Kapur holds an MFA from Columbia University and has received fellowships from the Hambidge Center and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.

Author: Parul Kapur
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 03/01/2024
Pages: 358
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.16lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781496236784

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/22/2024
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2024

About the Author
Parul Kapur was born in Assam, India, grew up in the United States, and lives in Atlanta. She is a fiction writer, journalist, and literary critic whose writing has appeared in a number of publications, including Ploughshares, Pleiades, the New Yorker, Art in America, Guernica, Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Paris Review. Kapur holds an MFA from Columbia University and has received fellowships from the Hambidge Center and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.