Description
Fiction. Women's Studies. South Asian Studies. Finalist for the Foreword Indies Award for Historical Adult Fiction and Multicultural Adult Fiction. Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award's Grande Prize, Montaigne Medal and First Horizon Award. Received The Eric Hoffer Award Honourable Mention for General Fiction. Shortlisted for the Mary Sarton Award for Historical Fiction. One of 20 internationally recommended novels by the Walter Scott Prize.
Prior to 1857, the year it was engulfed by tragic historical conflict, the cosmopolitan city of Lucknow thrived on open-mindedness, great prosperity and pride, the city a magnet for musicians, poets, painters and chefs, drawing the finest cultural talent from other parts of India and the wider world. It proved too tempting a prize for the English East India Company not to attempt a takeover of the Kingdom of Awadh with its capital city, Lucknow. The devastation and disaster that came to be known as "the Red Year" was a turning point in the history of Indian colonialism. It gave birth to the self-conscious, anti-colonial nationalism that would define the next ninety years, eventually leading to Gandhi's nonviolent measures to oust the British from India once and for all. When the women decide to take on the English colonists who declare rule, what will be the ultimate price of the women's loyalty to the royal family and to the place they've grown to love?
Author Bio
Jocelyn Cullity's English family lived in India for five generations. When she was fourteen, she transcribed her great-great-great aunt's diary about being held hostage for five months during the 1857 "Indian Mutiny" in the city of Lucknow—and the event stuck with her. Based on a true story of colonial events in Lucknow, Cullity's debut novel, AMAH AND THE SILK-WINGED PIGEONS (Inanna Publications, 2017), illustrates for the first time the lost history of the Afro-Indian, Muslim women who fought against the English hoping to save the city they loved. Her short stories and nonfiction have been published in many journals including The Writer's Chronicle, Blackbird, Hayden's Ferry Review, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, and Minerva Rising. Her documentary film about young women in China, Going to the Sea, aired on The Women's Television Network, The Knowledge Network, and won the Lester B. Pearson Award for International Development at the REEL Women's Film Festival in Canada. She was born in Australia, grew up north of Toronto, Canada, and has lived for periods of time in both India and England. She teaches in the BFA in Creative Writing program at Truman State University, and currenly lives in Columbia, Missouri.
Author City: COLUMBIA, MO USA