description: At the age of fourteen, Lakshmi leaves behind her childhood among the mango trees of Ceylon for married life across the ocean in Malaysia, and soon finds herself struggling to raise a family in a country that is, by turns, unyielding and amazing, brutal and beautiful. Giving birth to a child every year until she is nineteen, Lakshmi becomes a formidable matriarch, determined to secure a better life for her daughters and sons. From the Japanese occupation during World War II to the torture of watching some of her children succumb to life’s most terrible temptations, she rises to face every new challenge with almost mythic strength. Dreamy and lyrical, told in the alternating voices of the men and women of this amazing family, The Rice Mother gorgeously evokes a world where small pleasures offset unimaginable horrors, where ghosts and gods walk hand in hand. It marks the triumphant debut of a writer whose wisdom and soaring prose will touch readers, especially women, the world over. 
language: English
title: The Rice Mother
titlecomplete: The Rice Mother
genres: Fiction, Historical, Cultural, Magical Realism, Asia, India, Asian Literature, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 7061
places: Malaysia
awards: awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best First Book in South East Asia and Pacific, awardedAt: 1293868800000
name: POPULAR-The Star Readers’ Choice Awards
category: Fiction