{"product_id":"9780865478114","title":"Ants Among Elephants : An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eAnts Among Elephants\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Sujatha Gidla\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal \u003c\/i\u003eTop 10 Nonfiction Book of 2017\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/i\u003eBest Book of 2017\u003cbr\u003eA \u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of 2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eAnts Among Elephants \u003c\/i\u003eis an arresting, affecting and ultimately enlightening memoir. It is quite possibly the most striking work of non-fiction set in India since \u003ci\u003eBehind the Beautiful Forevers\u003c\/i\u003e by Katherine Boo, and heralds the arrival of a formidable new writer.\"   —\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and  uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible transformation from student and labor organizer to famous poet and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, \u003ci\u003eAnts Among Elephants\u003c\/i\u003e is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Editors' Choice\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Sujatha Gidla’s \u003ci\u003eAnts Among Elephants\u003c\/i\u003e, which records the life of a Dalit family in the central Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and spans nearly a century, significantly enriches the new Dalit literature in English . . . Defiant in the face of endless cruelty and misery, and tender with its victims, she seems determined to render the truth of a historical experience in all its dimensions, complexity, and nuance. The result is a book that combines many different genres—memoir, history, ethnography, and literature—and is \u003cb\u003eoutstanding in the intensity and scale of its revelations\u003c\/b\u003e . . . \u003cb\u003eGidla’s book achieves the emotional power of V.S. Naipaul’s great novel \u003ci\u003eA House for Mr. Biswas\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e” —Pankaj Mishra, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Unsentimental, deeply poignant . . . \u003ci\u003eAnts Among Elephants\u003c\/i\u003e gives readers an unsettling and visceral understanding of how discrimination, segregation and stereotypes have endured . . . \u003cb\u003e[Sujatha Gidla] writes with quiet, fierce conviction, zooming in to give us sharply drawn, Dickensian portraits of relatives, friends and acquaintances, and zooming out to give us snapshots of entire villages, towns and cities\u003c\/b\u003e . . . In these pages, she has told those family stories and, in doing so, the story of how ancient prejudices persist in contemporary India, and how those prejudices are being challenged by the disenfranchised.” —Michiko Kakutani, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A remarkable family history . . . \u003ci\u003eAnts Among Elephants\u003c\/i\u003e may well be eye-opening not just for non-Indians—who will recoil in righteous horror from the intimate details of caste discrimination—but also for many Indians, for whom the lives of Untouchables take place out of sight . . . In this book of nonfiction one reads of real people fighting real cruelty with real courage and grace.\" —Tunku Varadarajan, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With her luminous command of fine details, Gidla manages a difficult and admirable task: she takes a tremendously personal memoir and renders it with such clarity that it tells the broader story of a place and an era.\"  —James Norton, \u003ci\u003eChristian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The sheer immensity of India—its history, geography, politics and peoples—would be hard to condense under any circumstances . . . [but Gidla] brilliantly narrows the scope by explaining the tumultuous events of 20th-century India through her own family’s strife-ridden lives.” —Priscilla Kipp, \u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[A] brilliant debut . . . Gidla is a smart and deeply sympathetic narrator who tells the lesser known history of India’s modern communist movement. The book never flags, whether covering Satyam’s political awakening as a young and poor bohemian or Manjula’s rocky marriage to a mercurial and violent man. Gidla writes about the heavy topics of poverty, caste and gender inequality, and political corruption with grace and wit. Gidla’s work is an essential contribution to contemporary Indian literature.\" —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An astonishing account, fired by compassion and lit up with a fierce sense of justice, filled with unforgettable characters raging against the violence and oppression that lurks under the surface glitter of modern India.”\u003cbr\u003e—Siddhartha Deb, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Beautiful and the Damned \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eAnts Among Elephants\u003c\/i\u003e is a fascinating and moving portrayal of one family's struggle to live.” —Lee E. Cart, \u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eAnts Among Elephants,\u003c\/i\u003e Sujatha Gidla gives us a family history that deeply humanizes key figures in India's Naxalite movement while also revealing an India that few outsiders will have encountered. Gidla's uncommon position and background equip her to approach her subject not with mere curiosity, or, worse yet, pity and condescension, but to tell the stories of some of India's most disenfranchised people from their own perspectives and in their own voices. This is an impressive and important book that should be read by anyone with an interest in modern India.” —Preeta Samarasan, author of \u003ci\u003eEvening is the Whole Day\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLong-listed Wall Street Journal Best Books of the Year (2017), Long-listed Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year (2017), Long-listed Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year (2017)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9780865478114\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":40597276426446,"sku":"9780865478114","price":28.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/getimage_49de5c0f-df25-4d23-900a-a6371e4e894f.jpg?v=1637876139","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9780865478114","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}