Skin

One evening in a bar in California, Pagan Miranda Flores finds herself pointing a gun at a drunk who promises tokeep her happy the way women deserve to be—‘barefoot and pregnant from sixteen to sixty’. That is when she decides to take a break from America, from her job and her lover, and journeys to Goa, where her grandmother Dona Gabriela lies on her deathbed. As she reacquaints herself with her Indian family, Pagan revives old relationships—and disaffections—and is drawn back into the rhythm of life in the village that she knew as a child. Until her old ayah, Esperanca, begins to tell her about the history of her family...In Esperanca’s strange and haunting stories, reality and fantasy overlap in a grand narrative of greed, passion and memory. Pagan learns of an iron-willed matriarch who mainpulated her children and their lives to preserve appearances, a slave runner destroyed by his own ambition, and a family of powerful women who kept alive the magical tradition of the African goddess in the midst of degradation.An engrossing tapestry of tales that spans three continents and several generations, Skin is an exhilarating first novel that celebrates the art of storytelling.‘At heart, each human being is a culture-crossed mongrel of history. Margaret Mascarenhas’ novel re-aligns our breath and senses to stories of Goan history that exist beneath the surface.’—Ginu Kamani‘As a writer Margaret Mascarenhas lets her imagination soar to rarefied heights, and as a reader you have to soar right along... You have not read a novel like this one before. Enjoy!’—Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, author of Tivolem