She is resistant, however, and their constant tug-of-war about India’s pros and cons results in a well-rounded portrait of a complicated country. Throughout the novel, Smita is escorted by a wealthy single man named Mohan, who adores his country and is eager to reintroduce its glories to his charge. While Meena and Smita live in completely different worlds, Smita increasingly realizes the parallels in their lives and in the ways they have been treated as Indian women. She interviews the brothers, the police and the village chief, who emboldened Meena’s brothers to commit their atrocities. Smita travels to Meena’s remote village and befriends the impoverished woman and her toddler daughter. That issue is thoroughly explored through the lens of Smita’s assignment: the case of Meena, a Hindu woman suing her brothers after they killed her Muslim husband and then burned and disfigured her. As one character comments, “We Indians are in the Dark Ages when it comes to the treatment of women.” Ever since, she’s been writing “to make sense of the world and to make sense of my own, often contradictory emotions and feelings.” In this spirit, Honor is a multifaceted examination of Smita’s love-hate relationship with her native country, a place that fills her heart yet is besieged with assaults on women. Similar to her central character, bestselling author Umrigar grew up in Bombay (now Mumbai) and immigrated to the United States at age 21. As Thrity Umrigar’s Honor opens, Smita is asked to cover an assignment in Mumbai-“the one place she had spent her entire adult life avoiding.” Readers will find themselves completely immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of India, a place that Smita acknowledges can be “cosmopolitan, sophisticated, but also resolutely out of step with the world.” They immigrated to Ohio, and now, 20 years later, Smita has grown up to become a world-traveling journalist who writes about gender issues.

At age 14, Smita Agarwal and her family were forced to leave Mumbai after a horrifying incident of religious persecution.

Honor by thrity umrigar review