![\"\"](\"https:\/\/th-i.thgim.com\/public\/incoming\/ii3jpp\/article69862684.ece\/alternates\/FREE_1200\/SM_Mondays.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe inner world of Vera Narois, the 10-year-old protagonist of Lopa Ghosh\u2019s new novel\u00a0Age of Mondays, is surprisingly grim, shaped by the turbulence she is living through. She must deal with a mother going away every Monday to \u201ca cold, cruel place\u201d, her parents\u2019 marriage unravelling at the seams, flailing friendships, and a class teacher who is very uncomfortable with her overactive imagination and worldview. \u201cSadness is not a bicycle that you learn to ride, and once you have learnt it, you cross over to the other side and become a sadcyclist… (it) is a smell, a colour, a person,\u201d she thinks.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Narois\u2019s childhood is hardly idyllic. It is one in which time is calculated in \u201cmega-annums and giga-annums\u201d, parents\u2019 fights that grow from sounding like the \u201clow hum of a helicopter\u201d to \u201ca mini-earthquake\u201d, and \u201clike fireflies, cancer stories gleamed and glowed\u201d. To escape all this, Narois begins creeping into the Jahanpanah Forest in South Delhi, a patch of wilderness \u201cthat has existed for centuries, rustling, shedding, lurking\u201d, overlooking her \u201chouse with limestone walls (that) can be spotted from an aeroplane if you have the eyes for it.\u201d Here, she meets a strange, almost otherworldly bunch of people, the Jahanpanah Jugnus, led by the handsome Silver Samir, an encounter that will have momentous consequences for little Narois and her family.<\/p>\n
Shadows of the past<\/p>\n
Ghosh\u2019s attempt to write in a child\u2019s voice \u2014 despite the unmistakably adult phrases often clashing with Narois\u2019s somewhat more ingenuous perspective \u2014 gives the novel remarkable depth and profundity. One cannot help but be moved by the thoughts and feelings of this very young person who is forced to constantly grapple with a dystopian present, filled with inequity, disease, drug abuse, depression, the rise of right-wing nationalism, the threat of war, the Israel-Palestine conflict and the unshakeable shadow of the past, whether it be the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Holocaust or the Iranian Revolution.<\/p>\n
Crammed with rich imagery, wry observations, interesting similes and metaphors, forays into synaesthesia and onomatopoeia and some clever dialogue,\u00a0Age of Mondays\u00a0is also a reminder that the world our children are likely to inherit is a doomed one, unless something changes and fast.<\/p>\n
\nAge of Mondays
\nLopa GhoshHarperCollins India\u20b9499<\/p>\n
preeti.zachariah@thehindu.co.in<\/p>\n
Published – August 01, 2025 07:15 am IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The inner world of Vera Narois, the 10-year-old protagonist of Lopa Ghosh\u2019s new novel\u00a0Age of Mondays, is surprisingly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[112932,3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-308054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-age-of-mondays-novel-lopa-ghosh-book-review-child-narrator-fiction-india-jahanpanah-forest-delhi-dystopian-childhood-literature-coming-of-age-indian-novel","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114951031586232171","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}