"Published in 1895, Saguna is the first autobiographical novel in English written by an Indian woman. Through the story of a rebellious adolescent torn between the old world and the new, the author portrays the experience of growing up in a family recently converted to Christianity–the breaking away from traditional Hindu ideologies, the subsequent schizophrenic search for stability. The story is made more poignant by the presence in it of Saguna’s mother Radha, who, as an orthodox Hindu child-bride, is later converted to Christianity by her husband and has to come to grips with her new identity. Despite its serious concerns, this remains a charming, vibrantly descriptive novel which evokes a childhood of musty afternoons pursuing the learning ‘meant for boys’, and of wild and free vacations in the Upper Deccan of rocky caves and twisted paths. An insightful psychological study of two women of different generations, as well as an invaluable social document of its times, this pioneering nineteenth-century classic will be a rich and rewarding book for all general readers and for scholars interested in issues of literature and gender as well as Christianity, colonialism, and nationalism."
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