What the Body Remembers

Set in the twilight of the Raj, this internationally acclaimed historical novel tells the story of the Partition of India through the eyes of the two wives of a wealthy Sikh. Sixteen-year-old Roop is elated when she discovers that she will marry Oxford-educated Sardarji. But Sardarji's first wife is humiliated and enraged by his secret marriage to a village girl who is as fertile as she is barren. Pretending to be solicitous of her young rival, Satya takes charge of Roop's children and secretly plots her downfall.

Domestic politics rival India's volatile national politics as both women risk all I nthe escalating tension.

Shauna Singh Baldwin's first novel, What the Body Remembers, was published in 1999 by Knopf Canada, Transworld UK, Doubleday USA, and (as an audiobook) by Goose Lane Editions. It received the 2000 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best Book (Canada-Caribbean region) and has been translated into fourteen languages. Her second novel The Tiger Claw was a finalist for Canada's Giller Prize 2004. Shauna is the author of English Lessons and Other Stories and coauthor of A Foreign Visitor's Survival Guide to America. Her awards include the 1995 Writer's Union of Canada Award for short prose and the 1997 Canadian Literary Award. English Lessons received the 1996 Friends of American Writers Award.

A former radio producer and ecommerce consultant, her fiction and poems are widely published in literary magazines and anthologies in the US, Canada, and India. She has served on several juries and teaches short courses in creative writing. Shauna holds an MBA from Marquette University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. We Are Not in Pakistan: Stories was published by Goose Lane Editions in 2007. Shauna's third novel, The Selector of Souls, was published by Knopf Canada in September 2012. Reviews, reading schedule, and interviews at: www.ShaunaSinghBaldwin.com.