About the Book

Krishna Sobti's The Music of Solitude is a novel about sharing solitude and growing old in a city that is at once keenly private and aggressively collective. This is as much a portrait of the changing times as it is the story of a beautiful romance that thrives on companionship.

About the Author

Krishna Sobti was born in 1925 in Gujarat, now in west Pakistan. She is most well known for her 1966 novel Mitro Marjani, an unapologetic portrayal of a married woman's sexuality. Her other important novels are Daar Se Bichhudi, Dil-o-Danish, Surajmukhi Andhere Ke, Ay Ladki, Samay Sargam, Yaaron Ke Yaar and Zindaginarna. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980 for Zindaginama and in 1996, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the highest honour given by the Akademi. She is also the recipient of the first Katha Chudamani Award in' 1999, the Shiromani Award 1981, Hindi Academy Award 1982, Shalaka Award of the Hindi Academy Delhi in 2001, and the Hutch-Crossword Award 2005 for the English edition of Dil-o-Danish. Samay Sargam was selected for Vyas Sammaan, instituted by the K.K. Birla Foundation. She was offered the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2010, which she declined, saying, 'As a writer, I have to keep a distance from the establishment.

Vasudha Dalmia is Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Hindu Studies at Yale University. Before that, she was Professor of Hindi and Modern South Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for several years. Her previous books include a monograph, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and Nineteenth Century Benaras (1997) and Poetics, Plays and Performances: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre (2006). Of her edited works, The Oxford India Hinduism Reader (2007) and Hindi Modernism: Rethinking Agyeya and His Times (2011) appeared most recently. She is currently preparing two co-edited volumes for publication, Religious Interaction in Mughal India and Religious Interaction in Modern India.