Synopses & Reviews
On the eve of her wedding in 1960s Trinidad, Vasti discovers that her arranged marriage is to the rapist she saw through a curtain of sugarcane stems 12 years earlier. Will she speak out, defying convention and thereby shaming her family, or succumb to tradition and silently submit to her fate? Terrified, she collapses and dreams the parallel story that runs through the novel where the three surviving wives of an 18th-century king in northern India are about to climb upon a burning pyre to fulfill the suttee, the traditional Hindu widow-burning custom practiced in India for hundreds of years.
Synopsis
On the eve of her wedding, Vasti finds her arranged marriage is to the rapist she saw in a sugarcane field years earlier. She can either speak out, defy convention and publicly disgrace her family or succumb to tradition and submit to her fate silently. The conflict rages within her and makes her ill, she collapses unconscious and is transported to the kingdom of Jyotika, two hundred years before where the three widowed queens of King Paresh are expected to climb onto a burning pyre to die with their dead husband to perform the sati or widow burning. Raise the Lanterns High explores such cultural violations with compassion and drama, from the perspective of the women asked to make these impossible sacrifices, and shows the bravery required to accept as well as to reject these traditions. This is the story of female emancipation as harrowing as it is beautiful.
About the Author
Lakshmi Persaud is the author of Butterfly in the Wind, For the Love of My Name, and Sastra.