Difficult Daughters - Manju Kapur

Set around the time of Partition and written with absorbing intelligence and sympathy, Difficult Daughters is the story of a young woman torn between the desire for education and the lure of illicit love. Virmati, a young woman born into a high-minded household, falls in love with a neighbour, the Professor - a man who is already married. That the Professor eventually marries Virmati, installs her in his home alongside his furious first wife and helps her with her studies, is small consolation to her scandalised family. Or even to Virmati, who finds that the battle for her own independence has created irrevocable lines of partition and pain around her.