My favorite line “shooting people makes me a don killing a dog just makes me a psychopath.” Shroff does an excellent job of placing the reader in this small Indian village, with a mix of language, caste delineation, customs and folklore. This was a wonderful, character rich story - the women are fully fleshed out. I loved watching Geeta’s confidence build as she sought to improve not just her own lot in life, but that of other women. The Bandit Queen, Phoolan Devi, who lived in the late 20th century, was a woman who took revenge on her male abusers before becoming a women’s activist and member of Parliament. Even now, women in India have very little independence, especially in the lower classes. It tackles the issues of childlessness, love, abuse of all kinds, and most importantly, women’s rights. Yes, there is humor, mostly dark, but it’s so much more. What surprised me was the depth of the story. This same reputation leads other women to come to her looking to get rid of their own no good husbands. The village mostly steers clear of her, given her reputation as an evil woman, a witch. She didn’t kill him, but everyone thinks she did. Geeta’s abusive husband ran off five years ago. From the description, I expected The Bandit Queens to be a mostly humorous novel about an outcast Indian woman.
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