The Awakening

Arjun is not a potter by birth. He is a low caste cobbler but he is determined to succeed in his chosen profession which deals with clay and straw instead of leather. Through Arjun’s struggle, the author explores caste and class discrimination that continues to plague society in contemporary India.

The story unfolds against the backdrop of the violence of the Naxal movement of the 1960s and ’70s that wiped out an entire generation of Bengal’s youth. Anita Agnihotri sensitively handles a difficult subject and interweaves these two struggles: the one of the idol maker and the other of the families of the young Naxalite revolutionaries whom the state destroyed.

“With a poet’s sensitivity [Agnihotri]… has an eye and ear for others’ conflicts and vulnerabilities, she is a passionate writer given to neither pretension nor partisanship.” – Kalpana Bardhan