Tomb of Sand

WINNER OF THE 2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 'A triumph of literature' Financial Times'Breathtaking ... It's impossible not to be charmed' Guardian'A novel of enormous intelligence' Daily TelegraphEighty-year-old Ma has slipped into a deep depression after the death of her husband. Her responsible eldest son and dutiful daughter-in-law attend to Ma's every need, while her favourite grandson, Sid, tries to lift her spirits with his guitar. But it is only when Sid's younger brother brings her a sparkling golden cane covered with butterflies that things begin to change. Reawakened by the cane's magical powers, Ma gets out of bed and embarks on an extraordinary new life. She ditches her cumbersome saris, befriends a hijra, and undertakes a fateful journey that will turn the family's understanding of themselves upside down. Brimming with folklore and dazzling wordplay, Tomb of Sand transforms one woman's unexpected rebirth into a masterful exploration of boundaries: between nations and generations, memory and forgetting, grief and joy, life and death. At once heart-wrenching and exuberant, it is a singular celebration of what can happen when we refuse to accept the limits the world has drawn for us.Translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell