Hope Factory | Lavanya Sankaran

An international event: a remarkable first novel of modern India, weaving together a rich tapestry of social manners and mores, ambition, greed, and love, which will establish Lavanya Sankaran as one of the most gifted and original writers of fiction today.

Where innocence, deceit and love collide Anand is a Bangalore success story: successful, well-married, rich. At least, that's how he appears. But if his little factory is to grow, he needs land and money and, in the New India, neither of these is easy to find. Kamala, Anand's family's maid, lives perilously close to the edge of disaster. She and her clever teenage son have almost nothing, and their small hopes for self-betterment depend on the contentment of Anand's wife: a woman to whom whims come easily. But Kamala's son keeps bad company. Anand's marriage is in trouble. And the murky world where crime and wealth and politics meet is a dangerous place for good men, and those who rely on them.