2023 Los Angeles Book Festival Awards - Honorable Mention
2023 London Book Festival Awards - Honorable Mention
2023 Southern California Book Festival Award - Honorable Mention - General Fiction
2022 Readers' Favorite Bronze Medal Winner - Fiction - Drama
IndieReader Best Reviewed Books of the Month (May 2022)
"In the vein of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Roychowdhury draws from her own family's experiences, weaving a spellbinding narrative that delves deep into the complexities of Indian social relations and identity." -Writer's Life Magazine
"Her (Saborna RoyChowdhury) writing doesn't just captivate readers- it motivates them to embrace the beauty and diversity that make our world so vibrant." -Monica Viera, HubPages
"Details how a haunting image from childhood inspired a novel challenging class status in India." -Michael Hagerty, NPR's Houston Matters
"Roychowdhury is one of those once in a lifetime authors whose comprehension of the human condition is well-rounded and all-encompassing." -Carin Chea, inmag.com
"I was taken aback by the boldness of the book, addressing such large questions of politics and social critique, subjects that would daunt most writers. In the end it is the two young women, young, innocent, and torn apart by the events around them, who take a stand and establish what is important in life, giving a nod to our shared humanity, relationships, and care for one another." -The Brooklyn Review
"Saborna Roychowdhury's second novel has been gathering critical acclaim for exploring the volatile issue of why women and men get involved in religious extremism that espouses violence..." -India Currents
"Everything Here Belongs to You succeeds beautifully at telling an intimate and deeply felt story of a troubled connection between two young women, set against a larger narrative of ideological conflict." -IndieReader (4.8 Starred Review)
"A heart-wrenching family drama, as powerful as it is delicate." -Kirkus Reviews
"A moving and highly detailed coming-of-age novel that delves into cultural and political differences that threaten to destroy relationships." -Sublime Book Review
"The vitality of Everything Here Belongs to You can be traced to RoyChowdhury's empathy for Mohini and Parul, whose friendship and subsequent plight reminds this reader of classic Bengali stories, deeply ambitious and full of the desire to encounter the political and human conditions of India in this moment." -Jai Chakrabarti, award-winning author of A Play for the End of the World
"Everything Here Belongs to You is a riveting and rich portrait of female friendship across class and communal lines." -Elora Shehabuddin, author of Sisters in the Mirror
"Roychowdhury's wondrous novel mesmerizes as it navigates the complex power dynamics of sisterhood between a middle-class young woman in Kolkata and her live-in domestic worker who grew up together." -Stalina Villarreal, Mexican and Chicana poet/Translator/Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
"Writing with deep empathy and amazing assurance, the author has created a set of believable and rounded characters." -Abdullah Khan, bestselling author of Patna Blues
2022-05-06
In this novel, an impoverished Indian girl of the Muslim faith is forced to become a maid for a well-to-do Hindu family, a predicament that challenges her identity.
When Parul is only 6 years old, her father, Ahmed, decides to leave her with the Sens, a Hindu family of considerably superior financial means. Parul and her family had become so poor that they were on the brink of starvation. Parul is taken in as a maid, but her status in the wealthy family is discomfortingly ambiguous, a lack of clarity highlighted by her relationship with Mohini Sen. As Parul grows up, Mohini becomes a close friend and a kind of sister but also an object of great envy, a situation sensitively portrayed by Roychowdhury: “How much she tried to belong in Mohini’s world, and how unsuitable and poorly matched she was.” Moreover, since the Sen family is Hindu, Parul is forced to conceal her Muslim faith. Parul’s estrangement from her own family members, who increasingly treats her as no more than a source of income, exacts a terrible emotional toll on her. She seeks solace in her Muslim spirituality, a clandestine attachment encouraged by her secret boyfriend, Rahim. With impressive nuance, the author chronicles Parul’s growing emotional crisis, one that crescendos with a terrible choice. Rahim, out of an angry, radical rejection of all infidels, asks Parul to commit an act of violence that would count as a betrayal of her host family. Roychowdhury’s prose is deceptively simple and straightforward, but her story is deeply complex—Parul’s life touches on the alienation experienced as a result of religious identity, gender, and socio-economic class. While this is fairly well-traveled literary ground, the author’s treatment has a dramatic authenticity that makes it seem like a fresh rendering rather than the rehash of a formula.
A heart-wrenching family drama, as powerful as it is delicate.
