The Book

The long-awaited English translation of the popular Punjabi novel Katha Kaho Urvashi by Sahitya Akademi Award-winning novelist and distinguished academic Dalip Kaur Tiwana, Tell the Tale, Urvashi is the tragic intergenerational saga of a landed Sikh family in late 20th-century Punjab.

Devinder, his three sisters and their widowed, deeply religious mother form a close-knit family. Devinder’s special bond with his eldest sister Kuldeep is challenged by his marriage to Alka, a beautiful, restless woman constrained by traditional roles and expectations. Exploring the dynamics of family life, human relationships, the evolving roles of women and the social structures within which they are rooted, the novel addresses questions of identity and alienation, tradition and modernity against the backdrop of a wider cultural disorientation of our times, and hauntingly captures the search for the meaning of life, loss and death.

Using multiple narratives and narrative genres, Tiwana projects a many-voiced, fragmented world in which there are no black and white divisions, no saints or villains, only individuals limited by their own impulses and frailties, their memories and pasts—people in whom we can see reflections of ourselves. A universal tale of love and loss told simply but evocatively, this classic of Punjabi literature will appeal to all lovers of Indian fiction.