The Masked Face and two other stories : Novel

Can a woman become a full-fledged person in a society shackled by patriarchal norms? Can women and men shed the age-old stereotypes they have been fed, and discover more humane ways to live? Vaasanthi’s stories never take their eyes off these profound, searching questions. The three stories in this collection probe, thoroughly yet delicately, the ways in which inequality – and the yearning for equality – play out in the daily lives of women; and, by extension, in the men who have power over them. The stories gain depth from the acute observation of the experienced journalist Vaasanthi, who sees the real world as it is, and from the creative writer’s ability to imagine the interior lives of women in different settings and across generations. Throughout, Vaasanthi tempers her unflinching gaze with compassion, as she reveals layer after layer of the visible and hidden struggles of women – with their desires, their dreams, and their modes of survival. GITHA HARIHARAN, Writer