Anindita Ghose's debut novel The Illuminated, a beautifully nuanced work of fiction, centres on two women named Shashi and Tara. Shashi is shocked to discover that she has lost her life's moorings after the unexpected death of her famous husband. A passionate relationship with an older man has lured their fiercely independent daughter Tara, a scholar of Sanskrit, into it. This relationship threatens to engulf Tara in ways she never thought were possible. Shashi and Tara make an effort to see themselves and each other in a new way as a result of the rising wave of religious extremism in India that is determined to put women in their place. Is it feasible to survive an eclipse, though? An astonishing feat of the imagination, The Illuminated is as sophisticated in the quality of its prose as it is provocative in its thematic focus on questions of identity. A remarkable novel of ideas, it marks the arrival of a tremendous new literary talent.