cover image THE TIGER LADIES: A Memoir of Kashmir

THE TIGER LADIES: A Memoir of Kashmir

Sudha Koul, . . Beacon, $23 (224pp) ISBN 978-0-8070-5918-0

Koul recalls a charmed childhood in the Kashmir valley in this smart and poignant coming-of-age tale. The daughter of Hindu Brahmins, she was born in 1947 in India's version of Shangri-La—the city of Srinagar, cradled by snow-capped Himalayan mountains. Hindus were a minority, but lived in peace with their Muslim neighbors through much of Koul's happy youth, which was full of the ordinary lessons of growing up, as well as those particular to her region. At an early age she learns how to sit with a "kangri," a small portable firepot, under her bent knees, and she listens rapt to her grandmother's apocryphal stories about the region. Yet there are subtle signs of the segregation that will later explode into sectarian violence, forcing many to flee the valley or live in a state of siege. Muslims are among her best friends, but she cannot marry them. Some of her Hindu relatives won't eat in Muslim houses, so the host sends a package of uncooked lamb to their home. These shadows barely touch Koul's life, however—she becomes the first Kashmiri woman to join the civil service, gets married in her early 20s (after her relatives have given up hope for her betrothal) and follows her husband to Philadelphia soon afterward. Koul (Come with Me to India on a Wondrous Voyage through Time) calls her newest book "an epitaph to a way of life." Many readers, too, will mourn the loss of her Kashmir when they finish this simple, resonant tale. Agent, Rosalie Siegel. (May 14)