"Set in 1970s Bombay, the novel explores art, ambition, gender roles
and class with the same shimmering prose of Swamy's first book, the
story collection A House Is a Body."
**--**San Francisco Chronicle
"[A] sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity,
and love."
--NPR
In this transfixing novel, a young woman comes of age in 1960s- and
1970s-era Bombay, a vanished world that is complex and indelibly
rendered. Vidya's childhood is marked by the shattering absence and then
the bewildering reappearance of her mother and baby brother at the
family home. Restless, observant, and longing for connection with her
brilliant and increasingly troubled mother, Vidya navigates the stifling
expectations of her life with a vivid imagination until one day she
peeks into a classroom where girls are learning kathak, a dazzling,
centuries-old dance form that requires the utmost discipline and focus.
Her pursuit of artistic transcendence through kathak soon becomes the
organizing principle of her life, even as she leaves home for college
and falls in complicated love with her best friend. As the uncertain
future looms, she must ultimately confront the tensions between romantic
love, her art, and the legacy of her own imperfect mother.
Lyrical and deeply sensual, with writing as mesmerizing as kathak
itself, Shruti Swamy's The Archer is a bold portrait of a singular
woman coming of age as an artist--navigating desire, duty, and the
limits of the body. It is also an electrifying and utterly immersive
story about the transformative power of art, and the possibilities that
love can open when we're ready.
