Wife [Mass Market Paperback]

Bharati Mukherjee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 23, 1992

"Mukherjee writes with beautiful precision and just the right density of detail. There is an unlikely marriage of Jane Austen and Nathaniel West in her words."
THE VILLAGE VOICE
"Dimple Dasgupta had set her heart on marrying a neurosurgeon, but her father was looking for engineers in the matrimonial ads." So begins the wry story of an obedient daughter of middle-class Indian parents who is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Driven first to shock and then to despair, Dimple lives in a waking dream. And when her fantasies take a violent turn, she wonders where wishes end and reality begins....

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book still haunts me. In a time when the Western world tends to either romanticize or villainize the customs of India, this book is an honest look into what life can be like for a woman who is not only in an arranged marriage, but also taken out of the only home she has ever known and thrown into not simply the United States, but New York City. As the daughter of parents who moved to this country in the early 70's, I have relatives who have been arranged both here and in India, and have been personally shaped by the conflict of two cultures that are very different. Anyone who has an interest in India, Indian women, arranged marriage, marriage, or just human relationships will be thoroughly moved by this thought-provoking novel that is so authentic, it could be nonfiction.

From the Inside Flap

"Mukherjee writes with beautiful precision and just the right density of detail. There is an unlikely marriage of Jane Austen and Nathaniel West in her words."
THE VILLAGE VOICE
"Dimple Dasgupta had set her heart on marrying a neurosurgeon, but her father was looking for engineers in the matrimonial ads." So begins the wry story of an obedient daughter of middle-class Indian parents who is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Driven first to shock and then to despair, Dimple lives in a waking dream. And when her fantasies take a violent turn, she wonders where wishes end and reality begins....

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Fawcett (February 23, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449220982
• ISBN-13: 978-0449220986
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,447,206 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Award-winning Indian-born American author Bharati Mukherjee was born in Calcutta (now called Kolkata) in 1940, the second of three daughters born to Bengali-speaking, Hindu Brahmin parents. She lived in a house crowded with 40 or 50 relatives until she was eight, when her father's career brought the family to live in London for several years.

She returned to Calcutta in the early 1950s where she attended the Loreto School. She received her B.A. from the University of Calcutta in 1959 as a student of Loreto College, and earned her M.A. from the University of Baroda in 1961. She next travelled to the United States to study at the University of Iowa, where she received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1963 and her Ph.D. in 1969 from the department of Comparative Literature.

After more than a decade living in Montreal and Toronto in Canada, Mukherjee and her husband, internationally acclaimed author Clark Blaise, returned to the United States. She wrote of the decision in "An Invisible Woman," published in a 1981 issue of "Saturday Night." Mukherjee and Blaise co-authored "Days and Nights in Calcutta (1977) and "The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (Air India Flight 182)" (1987).
Mukherjee taught at McGill University, Skidmore College, Queens College, and City University of New York. She is currently a professor in the English department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mukherjee is best known for her novels "The Tiger's Daughter" (1971); "Wife" (1975); "Jasmine" (1989); "The Holder of the World" (1993); "Leave It to Me" (1997); "Desirable Daughters" (2002); "The Tree Bride" (2004); and "Miss New India" (2011). Her short story collections and memoirs include "Darkness" (1985); "The Middleman and Other Stories" (1988); and "A Father". Non Fiction works include: "Days and Nights in Calcutta"; and "The Sorrow and the Terror."

She was the winner of the 1988 National Book Critics Circle Award for "The Middleman and Other Stories."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A Life She Didn't Want With a Man She Didn't Want in a Country She Didn't Want, August 30, 2011

By 

Debnance at Readerbuzz (Alvin, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wife (Mass Market Paperback)

"She did not want to carry any relics from her old life; given another chance she could be a more exciting person, take evening classes perhaps, become a librarian. She had heard that many Indian wives in the States became librarians."


Stories of women's lives have been among my favorite reads. This powerful story is of a woman sent off to a life she did not want with a man she did not want to a country she did not want. Day after day of sitting in an apartment with nothing to do and nowhere to go, contemplating nine ways of killing herself. A dark story that left me feeling sad for women without choices.

The ending? Was it real or was it fantasy? Dimple seemed lost and confused about what was real and what was not real. I was left unsure about the ending.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A complex protagonist, May 27, 2000

By 

Snehal Ruparelia (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wife (Mass Market Paperback)

Dimple, the main character of "Wife" is portrayed in such a way by Mukherjee that the reader is left wondering about the attitude that he or she develops towards her. Mukherjee takes us deep into the mind of Dimple as she makes a transition from being single to marrying a husband chosen by her father,and from living in the familiar surroundings of Calcutta to moving to the so-perceived violent city of New York. As the novel progresses, Dimple's hidden unstable personality reveals itself leaving the reader shocked, yet entranced.