Alka Joshi creator text novel Gurugram Harper Fiction / HarperCollins Publishers 2025 monographic eng

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"When renowned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, shes expected to make a quick recovery, and her nurse, Sona, is excited to learn more about the vivacious artist who shares her half-Indian identity. Sona, yearning for a larger life, finds herself carried away by Miras stories of her travels and exploits and is shocked by accounts of the many lovers the painter has left scattered throughout Europe. When Mira dies quite suddenly and mysteriously, Sona falls under suspicion, and her quiet life is upended. The key to proving Sonas innocence may lie in a cryptic note and the four paintings Mira left in her care, sending the young woman on a mission to visit the painters former friends and lovers across a tumultuous Europe teetering toward war. On the precipice of discovering her own identity, Sona learns that the painters charming facade hid a far more complicated, troubled soul. In her first stand-alone novel since her bestselling debut, The Henna Artist, Alka Joshi uses the life of painter Amrita Sher-Gil, the Frida Kahlo of India, as inspiration for the storys beginning to explore how far well travel to determine where we truly belong." Alka Joshi Indian English fiction 813 ALK/S 9789369898909 260608