Stöbern
genialokal zum Startbildschirm hinzufügen
Installieren Sie die genialokal App auf Ihrem Startbildschirm für einen schnellen Zugriff und eine komfortable Nutzung.
Installieren Sie die genialokal App auf Ihrem Startbildschirm für einen schnellen Zugriff und eine komfortable Nutzung.
Tippen Sie einfach auf Teilen:
Und dann auf "Zum Home-Bildschirm [+]".
Bei genialokal.de kaufen Sie online bei Ihrer lokalen, inhabergeführten Buchhandlung!
In this follow-up to the critically-acclaimed The Laughter—winner of the Washington State Book Award—a middle-aged woman starts a firestorm when she holds a contest, based on an ancient Indian ritual, in which men must compete to win her affections.
A woman who has left two husbands announces she will celebrate her 55th birthday by holding a swayamvar. Drawn from an ancient custom in her Indian culture, this is an event in which suitors line up to compete in a feat of wills and strength to win a beautiful princess's hand in marriage. The woman, a renowned and respected intellectual in an American town who had once declared she was “past such petty matters as love,” knows she is now setting herself up for widespread societal ridicule, but her self-esteem and sexual libido are off the charts even as her body withers from disability, fading beauty, and her appetite for cake.
To her surprise, a cast of characters shows up to support her call—a wedding planner looking for the next enchanting thing, a disability rights activist making a documentary film, and even, begrudgingly, her own young adult son. The Men's Rights Movement protests her project, angry at her objectification of men. She is waylaid by visitations from goddesses and princesses past, who either try to slap sense into her or cheer her on. She must also reckon with a brutal love story in her ancestry that was endangered by the caste system—a story that placed a generational curse on those in the family who show an intemperance of spirit. As her whole plan spirals into a spectacle, the woman embarks on a journey to decide what feat her suitor must perform to be worthy of her wrinkling hand. What feat will define a newer, better masculinity? What feat will it take for her to trust in the tenderness of love?
Intemperance is at once a satirical feminist folktale and a meditation on how we might reach past all sense and still find love.
Sonora Jha is the author of the memoir How to Raise a Feminist Son and the novels The Laughter and Intemperance. After a career as a journalist covering crime, politics, and culture in India and Singapore, she moved to the United States to earn a PhD in media and public affairs. Sonora's op-eds, essays, and public appearances have been featured in the New York Times, on the BBC, in anthologies, and elsewhere. She is a professor of journalism and lives in Seattle.