Ladies Coupe

Anita Nair

Macmillan, 2004 - Fiction - 320 pages

This wonderfully atmospheric, deliciously warm novel takes the reader into the heart of women's lives in contemporary India, revealing how the dilemmas that women face in their relationships with husbands, mothers, friends, employers and children are the same world over.

Meet Akhila: forty-five and single, an income-tax clerk, and a woman who has never been allowed to live her own life - always the daughter, the sister, the aunt, the provider - until the day she gets herself a one-way ticket to the seaside town of Kanyakumari. In the intimate atmosphere of the all-women sleeping car - the 'Ladies Coupe' - Akhila asks the five women the question that has been haunting her all her adult life: can a woman stay single and be happy, or does she need a man to feel complete?

Contents

• Section 1: 1
• Section 2: 25
• Section 3: 41
• Section 4: 67
• Section 5: 81
• Section 6: 103
• Section 7: 144
• Section 8: 178
• Section 9: 207
• Section 10: 222
• Section 11: 283
• Section 12: 291
• Section 13: 293
• Section 14: 296
• Section 15: 306

About the author

Anita Nair lives in Bangalore, India. Her books have been published in several languages around the world. Her last novel, Mistress, was long listed for the 2008 Orange Prize in the UK, and named a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Award in the U.S. The Lilac House was recently adapted for stage and film in India.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Ladies Coupe
• Author: Anita Nair
• Edition: reprint, revised
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2004
• ISBN: 0312320876, 9780312320874
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Family Life / General; Fiction / General; Fiction / Women; Fiction / World Literature / India / 21st Century