The story is so unusual. So much detail about both Scottish and Indian life. I’ll definitely recommend this book … to my friends and family. – Bharati S., Amazon India
I read a lot of novels and I’m not afraid to quit one that I don’t like, but I was very pleasantly surprised when I started reading Munni at my Doorstep. Nargis Abraham is not a well-known author, but her writing was superb. Her novel has a lot of my favorite elements: it follows a woman through a big chunk of her life, there are many great female characters, I learned a lot about an interesting period in history, and it has a satisfying ending. The central tension is how this Indian child, brought up by a Scottish ‘spinster’ missionary at the turn of the last century, is received by various communities and what kind of adult life she will eventually settle into. It isn’t overly dramatic, but reads almost like a diary told from the point of view of the Scottish missionary. I was very interested to read in the acknowledgements that the author has an ancestor who was fostered by a presumably-white missionary “of whom very little is known to the family she was instrumental in establishing” — which is wild to think about! – Kerry B., Amazon USA