{"product_id":"railsong-a-novel-by-rahul-bhattacharya-9781526691729","title":"Railsong : A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eMagnificent' Kamila Shamsie\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e'Majestic yet profoundly tender' Megha Majumdar\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA breathtaking novel about a woman forging a life for herself on the railways, Railsong is the story of an individual coming of age amid the social and political upheavals of twentieth-century India.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn a newly independent India charged with national vigour, Charu, the motherless daughter of a railway worker, pines for freedom from the shackles of her impoverishment and meagre prospects.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs diesel engines replace steam and the calamitous churn of drought, famine and a great strike engulfs her town, Charu dares to imagine a different future for herself. She boards a train and flees westwards, leaving behind the oppressive domesticity of her childhood for the alluring modernity, and apparent opportunities, of Bombay.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eUnfazed by the everyday discriminations around her, she becomes an unlikely hero: a railway woman and census enumerator who keeps her heart open - sometimes guilelessly - to her nation's vast possibility.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSweeping, elegiac and at times wonderfully comic, Railsong is a powerful portrait of grit, optimism and the force of character that enables one remarkable woman to live on her own terms in a country full of contradictions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rahul Bhattacharya","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57308647194997,"sku":"9781526691729","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0812\/4075\/2426\/files\/9781526691729.jpg?v=1782120591","url":"https:\/\/sherlockandpages.com\/products\/railsong-a-novel-by-rahul-bhattacharya-9781526691729","provider":"Sherlock \u0026 Pages","version":"1.0","type":"link"}