Jackals' Wedding: A Memoir of a Childhood in British India

Jackals’ Wedding, my story within a family story set in India, the land of my birth, tells of a past of puzzling opposites. "Tigers, and oil, and tea are all I remember," I once blithely answered an Indian professor who’d taken me for a whirl. When he stopped dead, held me at arm’s length and searched my eyes, I had to think twice about the superficial untruth I’d blurted.

There were many parts of my early life I’d locked away in the dark, just like my mother, and my grandmother before he...