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Before We Visit the Goddess Audiobook
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A beautiful, powerful new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spies about three generations of mothers and daughters who must discover their greatest source of strength in one another—a masterful, brilliant tale of a family both united and torn apart by ambition and love
The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family’s situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single, unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri’s own daughter Bela, haunted by her mother’s choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover—but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she’d imagined. As the marriage crumbles and Bela is forced to forge her own path, she unwittingly imprints her own child, Tara, with indelible lessons about freedom, heartbreak, and loyalty that will take a lifetime to unravel.
In her latest novel, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, and the different kinds of love that bind us across generations. Before We Visit the Goddess captures the gorgeous complexity of these multigenerational and transcontinental bonds, sweeping across the twentieth century from the countryside of Bengal, India, to the streets of Houston, Texas—an extraordinary journey told through a sparkling symphony of voices.
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“The always enchanting and enlightening Divakaruni spins another silken yet tensile saga about the lives of women in India and as immigrants in America…Divakaruni’s gracefully insightful, dazzlingly descriptive, and covertly stinging tale illuminates the opposition women must confront, generation by generation, as they seek both independence and connection.”
— Booklist (starred review)
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“Divakaruni…balances the ache of separation with the thrills of independence and self-discovery…her characteristic passion, nerve, and insight into the troubled soul are here in full.”
— Wall Street Journal -
“I will never forget Sabitri, Bela, and Tara: grandmother, mother, and daughter after my own heart. Chitra Divakaruni cycles through generations of time, until we come to know our ancestresses—and the goddess. A lovely book.”
— Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior -
“Tender, bittersweet, beautifully wrought tales about love and longing, exile and loneliness. I was reminded of the songs of separation sung by Bhojpuri women: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni discovers new nuances in the ‘biraha’ that creeps into the lives of migrants.”
— Amitabh Ghosh, author of The Glass Palace -
“In a novel spanning India and the United States over sixty years, richly drawn characters negotiate the desire for education against family obligations and romantic entanglements…A novel of quiet but deeply affecting moments.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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About Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling author, activist, and professor. Her work has been published in over fifty magazines, including The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and included in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Her books have been translated into twenty-nine languages, and several have been used for campus-wide reads and made into films and plays. She teaches at the University of Houston.
About the Narrators
Sneha Mathan is a voice actor and audiobook narrator. Her audiobook work has received several Earphones awards, and she is a three-time Audie Award finalist. She lives in Seattle.
Priya Ayyar is an audiobook narrator, actor, and writer with a BFA and MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her acting credits for television and film include Law & Order: Criminal Intent, All My Children, and the documentary The Children of War. She has appeared on stage in War of the Unheard, Aminta, and The Road Home, and she has written and performed in the plays Karmic Fusion and Losing Remote Control.
Vikas Adam is a classically trained actor with numerous credits in stage, film, commercials, and television, in addition to his over two hundred recorded audiobooks. His narrations have garnered numerous awards and nominations, including AudioFile Earphones Awards, various Best of the Year lists, and the prestigious Audie Award. He was an inaugural inductee into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame.