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Manju Kapur

Difficult Daughters: A Novel Paperback – March 30, 1999

by Manju Kapur (Author)

262 ratings

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Set around the time of Partition and written with absorbing intelligence and sympathy, Difficult Daughters is the story of a woman torn between family duty, the desire for education, and illicit love. Virmati, a young woman born in Amritsar into an austere and high-minded household, falls in love with a neighbour, the Professor--a man who is already married. That the Professor eventually marries Virmati, installs her in his home (alongside his furious first wife) and helps her towards further studies in Lahore, is small consolation to her scandalised family. Or even to Virmati, who finds that the battle for her own independence has created irrevocable lines of partition and pain around her.

Difficult Daughters was short-listed for the Crossword Book Award in India.

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Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Faber & Faber
Publication date

March 30, 1999
Dimensions

5.25 x 1 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

0571196349
ISBN-13

978-0571196340

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Rhi The Immigrant
Manju Kapur

Paperback
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Editorial Reviews

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"This is a skilful, enticing first novel by an Indian writer who prefers reality to magic realism. Manju Kapur's sensuous pages re-create an intimate world where family groups sleep in the open air on the roof and wash themselves in the yard in the dewy cool of morning, where love-making is furtive and urgent because another wife may be listening, and women's lives move to a complex choreography of cooking, washing, weaving and mending, growing, picking, chopping and blending...This book offers a completely imagined, aromatic, complex world, a rare thing in first novels." --Maggie Gee, Sunday Times

"Kapur's book is steeped in exquisite melancholy." --Guardian

"Kapur writes with quiet intelligence and wry, deadpan humour. Set against the bloody backdrop of Partition, this is a powerful portrait of a society where shame is more important than grief, pragmatism goes hand-in-hand with superstition, and a pregnant wife has to share a bed with her mother-in-law." --Observer

"An urgent and important story about family and partitions and love." --Vikram Chandra

About the Author

Manju Kapur was born in Amritsar. She is a teacher of English literature at Miranda House College, Delhi University, and has four children. Researching and writing Difficult Daughters, her first novel, took her five years.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Faber & Faber
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 30, 1999
Edition ‏ : ‎ New edition
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0571196349
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0571196340
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.9 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1 x 8.25 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #887,564 in Literature & Fiction (Books)
Customer Reviews:
262 ratings

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Manju Kapur
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2016
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Up to recently I only had read " The Immigrant " which I found quite exceptional, and all of a sudden, I realised I love Manju Kapur's writing, so I ordered the 4 other novels she had written.( at Amazon of course ) I'm now an unconditional fan of Manju's.

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History and Women
An award winning novel!
Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2014
Difficult Daughters is a novel that sweeps you into a world where a young modern girl struggles against traditional values to forge a fulfilling life for herself. With strong dreams to be educated, Virmati falls in love with her new neighbor, an already married professor. Despite the struggles of her family to keep them apart, Virmati sacrifices everything so she can be with her beloved in their scandalous relationship. Her family turns against her and she finds herself alone, trying to hold her head high against societal normals.

The story takes place in 1947 during a tumultuous period in India's history. Poignantly written and absorbing, I could not help but become absorbed and enchanted with a heroine who will risk all to be true to herself and forge a better path for women in her country. The plight of women trapped in stringent cultural norms is a strong theme throughout this lush novel. It is no surprise that this novel has won the prestigious Commonwealth Writer's Prize. My only concern was there was an overabundance of Indian words describing clothing and various items for which no glossary was provided, and which pulled me out of the story. This was especially evident in the earlier chapters and faded gradually as the story progressed. Despite this, readers should persevere, for the story is truly engaging and worth reading. Definitely recommended.

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Louise Rohde
An Indian conundrum.
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2018
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The book was quite well written. A look into the life of women in India was very interesting.

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Cary Watson
Good, but not terribly original
Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2012
Format: Paperback
Just this week an international poll taken by the Thomson Reuters Foundation found that India is the least woman-friendly country amongst the G20 countries. Women in India are still subject to domestic slavery, child marriage, and violence and murder as result of dowry disputes. Difficult Daughters shows that the more things don't change, the more they stay intolerable. Difficult Daughters is set in the years leading up to India's Independence and Partition. The central character is Virmati, the eldest daughter of a prosperous family of jewellers. As she comes of age in the early 1940s the political changes sweeping India have also produced a shift in attitudes towards women. A small, but significant, minority of women are choosing to continue their education past the most basic level, right up to university. Virmati is one of those girls.

Difficult Daughters is a hindsight novel. The purpose of hindsight novels is to take us back in time to show us that things were once a whole lot worse, or, in rarer cases, a whole lot better. In this case, author Kupar is looking back and letting us know that Indian women, even the ones from the middle-classes, had it very bad. The hindsight aspect of the novel isn't its strongest feature. It's hardly news to us, or Indian readers, that women faced a laundry list of restrictions, prejudices and barriers once upon a time. The more time Kapur spends detailing the sexism of 1940s India, the more the story drags.

Fortunately, Kapur does a much better job of describing the relationship between Virmati and Harish, a college professor. When Virmati goes to college Lahore she comes under the spell of the married professor. He pursues her despite the fact that he's married and they eventually become lovers. This affair, and Virmati's quest for educational success, drives her away from her traditional family until, eventually, she's ostracized by them. Harish finally marries Virmati and makes her a co-wife, something that was allowed, but frowned upon, in Hindu society. Life in a two-wife household is hell for Virmati. It's this aspect of the novel that Kapur excels at; her descriptions of the tension in the household, and the weasel-ish hypocrisy of Harish are excellent. As a psycholgical novel, as a character study, Difficult Daughters is very good.

Read more of my reviews at JettisonCocoon dot com.

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Casee Clow
Thought-provoking and quietly powerful
Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2014
Manju Kapur’s debut novel, Difficult Daughters, is the powerful story of a young woman’s search for independence in a time when the path of a woman’s future was anyone’s decision but her own. Virmati is a young Punjabi girl, born to a high-minded family in Amritsar; the oldest daughter of an ever-growing brood, Virmati spends much of her youth taking care of her siblings. With encouragement from her father and grandfather, Virmati’s dream of pursuing an education becomes her greatest passion, much to the dismay of her mother. As far as Kasturi is concerned, a good marriage is a woman’s destiny and Virmati is merely flirting with disaster. One of the first of the novel’s distinctive qualities is the author’s way of exposing elements of the plot out of order: we are first met with Virmati’s daughter as she reflects on her mother’s death, and we reconnect with her throughout the book as she researches in order to learn more about the life Virmati was loathe to share with her. Additionally, the narrative takes us back as early as the beginning of the 20th century where we briefly witness Virmati’s mother, Kasturi, as a young girl. It’s through these quiet, almost indecipherable shifts of focus that Kapur delivers a clever examination of how three generations of women rebelled against each other in much the same way. Her writing is beautiful and assured throughout, dispersing at will to connect the reader with all manner of information – intense descriptions of the history, nuances of the Indian lifestyle, introductions to innumerable interesting characters – while maintaining a steady focus on the heart of the story, the life of young, determined Virmati.

The narrative follows Virmati’s life through World War II and Partition as her studies are interrupted by an illicit love affair with a neighboring professor – a married man – whose passion for her begins to take the shape of an obsession. Virmati finds herself torn between her love for the professor, her obligations to her family, and her unyielding desire for independence; her life is soon in upheaval as she’s thrust about by the opinions and desires of those around her. With a striking command of language and a natural eloquence, Kapur weaves a story at once heartbreaking and impressively thought-provoking. Her female characters are all fiercely rendered, each fascinating in her own way – from the professor’s disgraced first wife to Virmati’s activist roommate – and each fascinating despite her flaws. No one is without shortcomings in the story, including Virmati, whose devotion to the professor readers may not be able to fully grasp. Virmati’s father is perhaps the most progressively drawn of the male characters here, while the professor seems at first a starry-eyed intellectual evoking compassion before developing into a decidedly selfish, maudlin source of frustration. This, though, feels like quite the unconventional portrait of a romance that Kapur intended to draw, and as the novel progresses it makes Virmati’s story all the more poignant.

First published in 1998, Difficult Daughters went on to win the 1999 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in the Europe and South Asia region. Reading it, one is quick to forget that the novel was, in fact, Kapur’s debut: her style of writing is risky but beautiful, her confidence steady, and her characters richly developed. Her inclusion of small, consistent details that color the daily life of her Indian women works to bring the authenticity of her India to larger life, even for a foreign reader who may not be familiar with the native terms Kapur is quick to utilize. This is one of the many charms of Difficult Daughters, the way it confidently offers its roots and the road to its present. In her examination of the search for female identity, Kapur puts forth an illuminating novel full of power, honesty, and grace.

(Review © Casee Marie, originally published on June 19, 2014 at LiteraryInklings.com. A copy of the book was provided for the purpose of review.)

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M. Seidel
Das Buch ist wie beschrieben.
Reviewed in Germany on March 12, 2025
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Das Buch ist wie beschrieben.

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shanna
Good read
Reviewed in Canada on November 25, 2018
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
its was really good book to read and it highlights gender inequalities and shows how society separate the actions of men and women

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pamela jones
Buon libro
Reviewed in Italy on January 30, 2015
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Chi volesse conoscere usanze e tradizioni indiani di oggi dovrebbe leggere questo libro. Manju Kapur è una scrittrice molto facile da leggere. I scrittori indiani sono sempre bravissimi nel raccontare una storia. Chi non li conosce ancora dovrebbe cominciare con questo genere di libri.

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Salma
Beautifully written
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 3, 2022
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Couldn’t put this down! Great writing

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Amazon customer Arvind
A Masterpiece
Reviewed in India on January 28, 2018
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
The book is gripping, fast paced and engrossing. It gives a factual and compelling account of the events leading up to independence in a very lucid and flowing manner. The cosmopolitan Lahore of that era is a revelation to many, used as they are to the narrow mindedness and regression associated with contemporary Pakistani cities. The violence preceding Independence is chilling and a tacit and sad commentary on the collective failure of politicians to prevent it.
The book also offers an absorbing insight into the lives of Indian women and the complexity of relationships they had with the various family members and men in general. The protagonist, Virmati, is not only submissive, an embodiment always associated with Indian women, but surprisingly independent when it comes to making important decisions in her life. Truly an example for many.
We always thought that nuclear families were a recent phenomenon, but are surprised to learn that the seeds were sown much before independence, and the circumstances leading to it. A must for everyone wanting to read something meaningful and engaging.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Manju Kapur

4.0 out of 5 stars An award winning novel!

5.0 out of 5 stars An Indian conundrum.

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not terribly original

5.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking and quietly powerful

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Das Buch ist wie beschrieben.

5.0 out of 5 stars Good read

4.0 out of 5 stars Buon libro

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece

Manju Kapur

An award winning novel!

An Indian conundrum.

Good, but not terribly original

Thought-provoking and quietly powerful

Das Buch ist wie beschrieben.

Good read

Buon libro

Beautifully written

A Masterpiece