The Guilty and Other Stories

This anthology is a veritable treat with its many tales and the twists…Uma and Maadhav, traumatized victims of their childhood. Have agonized for two decades to unravel the painful mystery of their mother’s suicide. More isolated and alone, their father Balasubramanian too grapples with a past that does not cease to haunt him…A Young bride takes courage in her hands to defy a tyrannical social custom.For decades a patriarch has lorded over the numerous women in the household, until one of them rebels.Declared mad by the husband, a wife is forced to confinement in a sanatorium.Nostalgia tugs at an expatriate as he is haunted by the fear that his roots will fade away.As ever, Vaasanthi’s power lies in the quintessential humanist perspective that she brings to her incisive writing. Her characters, mostly female, deal with injustices within their social circumstances in most unique ways, making for evocative and haunting endings.