Description

Living on rent in a wealthy, religious house, Chintamoni spends her days holding together her ordinary, lower-class family. Nothing excites her in her marriage to an unremarkable man, while the shadow of her son’s heart disease looms over her austere life. When a secretive devotee of Ma Kali begins boarding in the house, Chintamoni realises that the man has been eyeing her. His arrival kindles her dormant desires, bringing her both love and money. But the events that should have changed her life for the better end up making it much worse. Hidden Treasure is the story of a woman—and of women—struggling to make something of their lives in a world run by men, money, and religion.

Since her exceptional debut novel, Shankini, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay has written nine novels and over fifty short stories. With extraordinary women often leading her works, she traverses topics from gender and sexuality to religion and social commentary. Her writing is acerbic and unsettling, making her stories hard to put down or forget. Also a newspaper columnist and film critic, Bandyopadhyay lives and writes in Kolkata.

Ipsa S is a graduate student with a major in English, and a minor in History and Creative Writing. Their interests encompass gender, sexuality, and linguistics. The rigour of academia has nearly put them off creative work, but they continue to pursue writing in the one city and one college campus where they’ve spent twenty years of their life. They spend time reading anything and everything and nursing slightly unhealthy obsessions with cats and queer media.