The Toss of a Lemon - by Padma Viswanathan (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A sweeping, luminous saga of love, loss, caste, and resilience in colonial India.

When ten-year-old Sivakami is married to a much older astrologer, her fate is sealed by tradition. By eighteen, she is widowed--her head is shaved and, according to Brahmin custom, she cannot touch or be touched, even by her young children, from dawn to dusk. But Sivakami refuses to vanish into ritual seclusion. With fierce determination, she returns to her husband's household to raise her two children, enlisting the help of Muchami, her loyal servant and silent partner in defiance.

Spanning over sixty years and three generations, The Toss of a Lemon follows Sivakami's family as India transforms--from colonial rule to independence, from caste-ridden orthodoxy to modern upheaval. With every turn of history and heartbreak, the choices they make ripple outward, forever altering their legacy.

Padma Viswanathan's acclaimed debut blends intimate storytelling with epic scope, exploring the bonds of family, the weight of tradition, and the quiet acts of rebellion that shape a life.

Review Quotes

International praise for The Toss of a Lemon

"Padma Viswanathan has real talent."
--New York Times Book Review

"A brilliant tour de force."
--India Today

"Electrifying."
--Baltimore Sun

"Viswanathan's book, like Rushdie's work, aims for epic status. But it actually achieves something that is in many way more nuanced than the broad brushstrokes of an epic: a meditation on fate's workings in a family dominated by the quiet rule of one woman--and the struggle of her son against the strictures of her belief."
--Washington Post Book World

"Viswanathan immerses readers in the realities of the caste system from both sides; in telling a universal story of generational differences on a personal level, she makes a vanished world feel completely authentic. Superbly done."
--Booklist

"The portrait is dazzling. Gender rules, class relations, and the political castes of late 19th- and early to mid-20th-century India are well presented, making this an important work of historical fiction."
--Library Journal, starred review

"This is a rich, sensual book that uses life itself as its plot...reading it is an experience of immersion.... There is a whole world here between two covers."
--The National Post (Canada)

"We see exactly how magnetic, how sinkingly seductive that [Brahmin] life was, and how difficult it must have been when the habits and customs of millennia were overturned by the shock of the new...Leaving the book feels like getting out of a warm bath on a cold day. Viswanathan is a charming writer...one's senses are overwhelmed by a rich density...Viswanathan makes clear the fear and ferocious love motivating ancient tribes, clans and classes that cling to the old ways."
--The Globe (UK)