Unbound: 2,000 Years of Indian Women's Writing

Profound, exhilarating, haunting, angry, and meditative, Unbound is a collection that shatters stereotypes about women’s writing in India.

Spanning over two thousand years, Unbound brings together some of the most significant writing by Indian women. Divided into eleven sections, it explores a wide range of themes, including spirituality, love, marriage, children, food, work, social and individual identity, battles, myths and fables, travel, and death. While many of the pieces reflect the struggles women face in overcoming social and political obstacles, all showcase the remarkable creative power of their authors.

The term “women’s writing” has often been used to limit and stereotype the work of women writers. Here, it is used in a broader, more constructive sense to describe the context of the book. As Annie Zaidi notes in her introduction, “Women bring to their writing the truth of their bodies, and an enquiry into the different ways in which gender inequity shapes human experience.”

Selected from hundreds of novels, memoirs, essays, short story collections, and volumes of poetry—written in English or translated into English—this collection features distinctive and powerful voices from every era. It includes verses from the Therigatha, written by Buddhist nuns (circa 300 BCE), works by poet-saints such as Andal, Avvaiyar, Lal Ded, and Mirabai, and modern classics by writers including Ajeet Cour, Amrita Pritam, Arundhati Roy, Attia Hosain, Bama, Bulbul Sharma, Irawati Karve, Ismat Chughtai, Kamala Das, Krishna Sobti, Mahasweta Devi, Manju Kapur, Mannu Bhandari, Mrinal Pande, Nayantara Sahgal, Pinki Virani, Qurratulain Hyder, Rashid Jahan, Romila Thapar, Sarojini Naidu, Saudamini Devi, and Shivani. It also highlights contemporary voices such as Arundhathi Subramaniam, Nilanjana Roy, and Nivedita Menon.

Features:

• Extracts spanning genres, languages, and over 2,000 years
• Writing in English alongside works translated from multiple Indian languages
• Thematic organization that showcases the diversity of women’s writing
• A broad and comprehensive introduction to women’s writing in India