{"product_id":"railsong-9781037206580","title":"Railsong","description":"\u003cp\u003eA breathtaking novel about a woman forging a life for herself on the railways, \u003cem\u003eRailsong\u003c\/em\u003e is the story of an individual coming of age amid the social and political upheavals of twentieth-century India.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn a newly independent India charged with national vigour, Charu, the motherless daughter of a railway worker, pines for freedom from the shackles of her impoverishment and meagre prospects. As diesel engines replace steam and the calamitous churn of drought, famine and a great strike engulfs her town, Charu dares to imagine a different future for herself. She boards a train and flees westwards, leaving behind the oppressive domesticity of her childhood for the alluring modernity, and apparent opportunities, of Bombay.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnfazed by the everyday discriminations around her, she becomes an unlikely hero: a railway woman and census enumerator who keeps her heart open --sometimes guilelessly -- to her nation's vast possibility. Sweeping, elegiac and at times wonderfully comic, Railsong is a powerful portrait of grit, optimism and the force of character that enables one remarkable woman to live on her own terms in a country full of contradictions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rahul Bhattacharya","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48931502620923,"sku":"9781037206580","price":39.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0806\/8176\/3067\/files\/d9776118c45df50bef08b7fb84e764d9.jpg?v=1780480763","url":"https:\/\/aureliabooks.co.nz\/products\/railsong-9781037206580","provider":"Aurelia Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}