Rupture

by Sampurna Chattarji

In the course of twenty-four hours, nine characters across five cities are faced with a pressing need to examine their past. As each of them confronts the realities within, the world itself explodes into chaos, the disintegration of civic order mirroring the breakdown of individual sanities. A powerful first novel from a critically acclaimed poet, translator and fiction-writer, Rupture is a book in which every word, every emotion resonates with a heightened sense of intensity. Sampurna Chattarji brings to her writing a poetry and potency that is rare, and the sheer pace of the narrative pulls the reader in with its urgency.

348 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2009

About the author

Although born in Ethiopia Sampurna Chattarji grew up in Darjeeling, India and graduated in English Literature from New Delhi. She worked in advertising for 7 years before becoming a full time writer in 1999.

She is a poet, novelist and translator. Her nine published books include three poetry collections— Absent Muses, The Fried Frog and Sight May Strike You Blind; and two novels— Rupture and Land of the Well. Her translation of Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray is now a Puffin Classic titled Wordygurdyboom! Her poetry has been translated into German, Swiss-German, Irish, Scots, Welsh, French, Tamil, Manipuri and Bambaiyya; and her children’s fiction into Welsh and Icelandic.

Sampurna is the editor of Sweeping the Front Yard, an anthology of women’s writing in English, Malayalam, Telugu and Urdu. She was the 2012 Charles Wallace writer-in-residence at the University of Kent, Canterbury.

More about her writing can be found at sampurnachattarji.wordpress.com.