The Two-Tailed Snake: An literary coming-of-age tale set in 1940s India

North-east India, 1945. Tensions are rising, but fourteen-year-old Joya doesn't pay much attention to 'political business' – she is more concerned with doing well at school and having fun with her best friends.

Yet when her father disappears without a trace, Joya's life falls apart. Forced to drop out of school and support her mother by working in a garment factory, she refuses to accept that her father is gone forever, spending her nights sewing him a suit from scraps of fine material.

But a...