Babyji: Stonewall Book Award Winner

by Abha Dawesar

Book Overview

Sexy, surprising, and subversively wise, Babyji is the story of Anamika Sharma, a spirited student growing up in Delhi. At school she is an ace at quantum physics. At home she sneaks off to her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400034566
• ISBN13: 9781400034567
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Big Nerd?

Anamika is the biggest nerd that I have ever met...and many of my friends would say the same about me. She was a smooth operator. From reading the description you might be a little turned off but don't be. A 17 year old girl who loves quantum physics sounds crazy but think about that girl in your class that loves math or loves British Literature. That girl could be Anamika - official Smooth operator. These girls/women have lives too as well as feels. Anamika relates many of the occurences in her life to quantum physics. Sounds boring but it isn't. Also, she is Indian. You learn alot about Indian culture in this piece also. She is respectful to her servant and her elders; she is mature enough to go to them and ask them about life. She has learned that quantum physics can guide you but it makes her life "chaotic"; she likes that in the beginning. This is a must read. I have suggested this book to all of my friends - gay and straight. In fact, I learned about it from the clerk at Oscar Wilde bookstore - a women who reads profusely and knows her customers. If you live in New York City, go there and she will find a book for you. I suggest this one.

A Modern Masterpiece

Abha Dawesar has blessed the literary world with a shocking, and more importantly, REAL, novel. Babyji gives insight to what it feels like to be a teenager, in a way I have yet to encounter in fiction. Most significant--and refreshing--about the novel, is that it does not deal with sexuality in black and white terms. Anamika, the witty and charming narrator, is never required to classify her sexuality, but rather to allow herself to experience it so that she can grow up to be the confident, unique woman the reader can already see emerging. Rather than encouraging labels, Dawesar draws attention to their insignificance, so to classify this novel as "lesbian fiction" is to diminish its value.You will fall in love with every single character in the novel, including the rough and rowdy Chakra Dev. Rarely does an author create so many sympathetic and intriguing characters in one book. After you turn the final page, you will keep wondering where they all wound up in life.Read Babyji and pray that Abha Dawesar continues to brighten our world with her prose!

The Best Book in the Last 20 Years!

Ah, this book is a breath of fresh air. There is just so much bad crap out there, this book reminded me of why I love reading -- because I like compelling personal stories that are raw, real and honest about what they are and are not. This story is funny, emotional and smart. What else is there in life??? She has another book, Miniplanner, that is good, but not as satisfying as this one. She needs to write more, and soon!

Breaking Taboos...

This book was recommended by someone who knows I like reading about the East Indian diaspora. But this book completely changed everything I knew about South Asian culture. This is an extremely well written and an easy to read novel. All the characters are very intriguing until the very end. It is not only captivating, but but breaks the rules of discussing taboo issues, particularly homosexuality, by talking about them in a matter of factly manner. The story is told in the first person by the protagonist Anamika, a teenaged physics geek who has more than come to terms with her lesbianism. She is having affairs with three females - a trusted servant, a gorgeous older woman, and a gullible schoolmate - simultaneously. It is refreshing to read a book because there is so little discussion about homosexuality in the Global South. When it is discussed, it is only discussed as being a "White Man's Disease" and thus stigmatized. When the film Fire, a story about two Indian housewives falling in love, was released a few years ago, religious extremists tried to vandalize the theatres it was shown in. So, the fact that this book has been well reviewed in many Indian publications maybe shows a slight shift on this taboo issue. I also enjoyed how the author introduced the caste issue. There is a growing movement to break down this archane class structure that didn't just start with Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things. This is a great book and I look forward to Dawesar's future books!

Sensational!!!!

This is perhaps one of the most capativating book that I have read. It was extremely compelling and utterly sexy and I just could not put it down. I can't wait to read more of Dewaser's work. I hope that she will write a sequel to this one. I would love to read more about Anamika's facinating life. The women in the book were absolutely sensational, I loved partical applications of the wave-particle duality. It was nice to see confident and intelligent women and a whole lot of them in one book. It was very refreshing to read about the caste system in this light. I would definetly recommend this to all.