The Far Field

A Novel

By: Madhuri Vijay

Narrated by: Sneha Mathan

Length: 14 hrs

Publisher's summary

In the wake of her mother's death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir's politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love.

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Critic reviews

“Remarkable...an engrossing narrative.... Vijay’s stunning debut novel expertly intertwines the personal and political to pick apart the history of Jammu and Kashmir.” (Publishers Weekly)

What to say about this book?

I enjoyed listening to this book. I liked it but didn’t love it. I always love to hear about different cultures, so that part was great. But the ending was disappointing. Mostly, the book kept my attention but then at the end I was left thinking ... “is that it”???

Oi beautiful Kashmir

loved it. and I love this narrator. Kashmir to this day lives under millitancy, the simple very poor moumtain people wanting their freedom and independance, like so many other world populations. Do we , are we, the western, the comfortable people of the other sides at all capable of understanding them? Was Shalini's visit so harmful to everyone there, was the gain only her own. So many questions rise up from this story. so much said and not said. So much love between the lines.
wonderful touching story

Fabulous choice for a book club!

As an American married to a Kashmiri, this book is one of the best I’ve found in capturing the contrast between the outward generosity, warmth and hospitality of the Kashmiri people with the powerlessness and sadness that they all, collectively and individually, carry inside them. There is so much misunderstanding and misinformation about the situation in Kashmir it is difficult for outsiders to grasp and even more difficult for Kashmiris themselves to explain. I’ve had so many Kashmiris ask me, “Why does no one care about what we’re going through?” and part of my answer is that people just don’t know. This book is an inside view from an outsider’s perspective which does much to bridge the gap in understanding. It addresses not just what people don’t know but also why they don’t know it.
You hear the statistics on the news but you can’t really grasp the pervasive social impact of the conflict until you spend a night holding your sobbing sister-in-law who is terrified because her son didn’t come home that night or witnessed the random violence of a soldier swinging a stick from the back of a passing jeep and knocking your neighbor, an old man carrying buckets of milk home to his family, to the ground, or spend day after day playing at home with nieces and nephews because their school is closed. Again. After decades of this daily uncertainty, what kind of future are these kids going to have? Without education they will continue to be vulnerable to emotional, political manipulation.
Sorry for the soapbox but the book really inspired me and I hope it touches you as well.
Discuss!

Excellent

The reader is engaging, expressive, excellent use of different voices male and female, and her voice fit with the culture of the story. The writing is interesting, bringing historical awareness and emotional complexity and depth.

great surprise

I stumbled upon this book purely by chance and I must confess that I loved it. I liked how it told the story from different perspectives and enlightening the world about a (to most of the world) little known conflict was a definite bonus.

Wonderfully rich characters and story

I loved hearing this book. the characters were brought to life by the reader and I literally would listen for hours, not wanting it to end. This was no fairy tale with a happy ending, but a story of flawed humans living their lives.

beautiful

a troublesome story beautifully told. a painful lesson about multiple cultures. I also see mental illness in one character. interesting to see how it is observed when not explicitly recognized

Pretty good story and decent first effort

Because I'm interested the difficult troubles in Kashmir and because I traveled and worked in Kashmir in 2006 and 2009 and because I lived in New Delhi for 5 years in the 1990s, I chose to read listen to this first novel by Maduri Vijay about Kashmir ... a novel which was strongly recommended by various book outlets. In 2009 I also read Salman Rusdie's great novel about Kashmir "Shalimar the Clown". There is really no comparison; I consider "Shalimar the Clown" one of Russia's best, along with "The Moro's Last Sigh" . Rushdie's novel about Kashmir is ten times more mature, erudite and artistic literature than "The Far Field". Still ,"The Far Field"I is a pleasant engaging and interesting story. It honestly evokes the physical beauty of the area as well as the intense tensions and suspicions that permeate life in rural Kashmir.

Enlightening

I love novels about the colorful, bittersweet culture of India. I was particularly fascinated by the truthfulness that Westerners never hear about the tumultuous state of Kashmir. The poverty and taking of innocents by the military in Kashmir is heart wrenching. The corruption of officials is appalling. The treatment of women in India is now surfacing. It is a third world nation struggling to gain a foothold in the 21st century but cannot seem to lose its hold on its pasts’ grip on poverty vs. wealth and modern technology. Not a glossy picture, but one that opens the listeners’ eyes.

Interesting book with a lot to think about

I'm not sure when I bought this - I may have bought it on sale one day - but I'm glad I've gotten around to listening to it. This is told in first person narrative by Shalini, a young woman from Bangalore. It goes back and forth between childhood, adolescence, college years, and at age 24. I like her, but find her at times naive and infuriating. She loses her mother while she is away at college. But a man from Kashmir that had been a street vendor had made a big impact on her. At age 24 she decides to go look for him. Her life and the lives of others changes with her decision.

There is a political backdrop to this book. There is the father's love of American jazz. There are the dynamics of a sometimes strained mother-daughter relationship. I loved this and the narration, even if I sometimes wanted to yell at Shalini!