Title: The Widows of Malabar Hill
Author: Sujata Massey
Context: The Widows of Malabar Hill is a historical fiction novel by Sujata Massey set in India during the 1920s. The responsibility of identifying what exactly had occurred on Malabar Hill is the responsibility of Lawyer Perveen. She also has to make sure that more innocent children and gullible women are in no danger in the future.
Synopsis: The story is about a daughter named Perveen Mistry, of a respected Zoroastrian family. After she became one of the very first female lawyers in India, she decided to join the law firm owned by her father. She had attained higher education from Oxford. However her personal history was tragic which made women’s legal rights especially of significance and importance to Perveen.
The will of a rich Muslim mill owner, Omar Farid has to be executed for which Mistry Law has been appointed. Mr Farid has left behind three widows. The paperwork is examined by Perveen after which she identifies a strange thing. The full inheritance has been signed by all the three wives to a charity. The question is what they would do now for survival. Lawyer Perveen suspects that there is something amiss especially because one of the wives had put her signature as X on the form. This was an indication that she was not learned and unable to read the document.
All the widows never speak to any men, or leave their women’s quarters, live in seclusion strictly and are in full purdah all the time. It could be a case where an unscrupulous guardian was taking advantage of them. An investigation conducted by Perveen reveals that her instincts were not wrong when the murder escalates tensions.
Other works by the Author:
The Perveen Mistry Investigations
-2018 – The Widows of Malabar Hill
-2019 – The Satapur Moonstone
The Rei Shimura Novels
1997 – The Salaryman’s Wife
1998 – Zen Attitude
1999 – The Flower Master
2000 – The Floating Girl
2001 –The Bride’s Kimono
2003 – The Samurai’s Daughter
2004 – The Pearl Diver
2005 – The Typhoon Lover
2006 – Girl in a Box
2008 – Shimura Trouble London
2014 – The Kizuna Coast
