Alice Albinia’s first book, Empires of the Indus, was a wonderfully well-observed travelogue set in Pakistan. Her second book is a novel set in India and has the hallmarks of what I would call the Indian Wedding Rock Opera genre. Surprise ingredients in the otherwise familiar mix of doomed lovers, unlikely couplings and multi-generational conflict are DNA research, slum-dwellers and a certain elephant-headed god.
The plot swirls around three characters: Leela, Meera and Prof Ved Vyasa Chaturvedi. The women are step-sisters while the professor is a Sanskrit scholar who lusts after the former but marries the latter. The playful, pot-bellied Ganesha enters the narrative as lord and scribe, observer, narrator, actor and instigator.
View From The Eastern Slope 
Bibliofile 
