{"product_id":"railsong-rahul-bhattacharya-9781037206580","title":"Railsong","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Magnificent' KAMILA SHAMSIE\n\u003cbr\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. As 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\u003e Unfazed 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. Sweeping, 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":"New","offer_id":49314502312179,"sku":"9781037206580","price":34.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0634\/4284\/5939\/files\/9781037206580.jpg?v=1782763083","url":"https:\/\/www.harryhartog.com.au\/products\/railsong-rahul-bhattacharya-9781037206580","provider":"Harry Hartog Bookseller","version":"1.0","type":"link"}