Publisher's Synopsis
"Powerful and poetic." TIME OUT On the eve of her arranged marriage, Vasti discovers that she is due to marry the rapist she saw in a sugar cane field years earlier. A horrific dilemma befalls her: she can either speak out, defy convention and bring the family name into disrepute or submit silently to her fate. Vasti collapses, and while unconscious, travels in a dream from her home in 1960s Trinidad back to 18th-century India. Here, King Paresh has just died in battle, and his three Queens are expected to perform suttee - to climb on the pyre with his body and be burned alive. Their dilemma is a matter of life and death, but the social pressures are much the same as Vasti's. Will they make a bid for escape?
