The Book of Shadows - Softcover

Bitya is a young university lecturer from Delhi. Her beauty has been ravaged by an acid attack. Hurt and humiliated, she returns to her childhood home in the foothills of the Himalayas. As she retreats into herself, her face covered by a gauze veil, Bitya becomes transfixed by the voices that sing out from the foundations of the old house. The English missionary, the doomed homosexual lovers, the Catholic priest, the erstwhile companion of Aleister Crowley and his sensual mistress—and the ghost of the house itself, solitary and sad, controlling and articulating these colliding realities. After a century of silence, something compels the ghost to speak—words that the injured woman now inhabiting the house will hear, words that will give her back to herself. Namita Gokhale lives in Delhi; among her books is Paro, Dreams of Passion.

Namita Gokhale is the author of three novels published in India, and of PARO, DREAMS OF PASSION, published by Chatto/Pan in 1984. She was brought up in the Kumaon Himalayas, the setting for THE BOOK OF SHADOWS and now lives in Delhi.