The Sleeping Dictionary Book Cover

The Sleeping Dictionary


A Historical Fiction Novel


Subgenres:

  • Colonial India,
  • Coming-of-Age,
  • Anti-Colonial
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This book is for you if you're into...

  • Stories of survival and reinvention across colonial India
  • Heroines navigating secret worlds and shifting identities
  • Historical fiction with language, espionage, and political awakening
Publisher Description

YOU ASK FOR MY NAME, THE REAL ONE, AND I CANNOT TELL. IT IS NOT FOR LACK OF EFFORT.

In 1930, a great ocean wave blots out a Bengali village, leaving only one survivor, a young girl. As a maidservant in a British boarding school, Pom is renamed Sarah and discovers her gift for languages. Her private dreams almost die when she arrives in Kharagpur and is recruited into a secretive, decadent world.

Eventually, she lands in Calcutta, renames herself Kamala, and creates a new life rich in books and friends. But although success and even love seem within reach, she remains trapped by what she is . . . and is not.

As India struggles to throw off imperial rule, Kamala uses her hard-won skills—for secrecy, languages, and reading the unspoken gestures of those around her—to fight for her country's freedom and her own happiness.

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