A beautifully written, heart wrenching story that is powerful. Smita is an Indian American journalist who left India at age 14 when her father took a teaching position at a US university. As a journalist she has been assigned to return to India to cover a court case dealing with the burning death of a Muslim man by his Hindu brother in-laws. In covering the story, Smita meets and interviews Meena the Hindu woman whose brothers killed her husband and burned and disfigured her as well. These two women’s lives become intertwined and in that process Smita comes to terms with her own past. Prepare to be transported and immersed in India’s sights, sounds and customs with this searing story of honor killings. An exceptional, moving read.
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book grabbed me from the very beginning. The writing is superb, the story heartbreaking and haunting. If you loved Khalid Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, then you must read this book.

A powerful quote from it:
"Everywhere she went, it seemed, it was open season on women. Rape, female genital mutilation, bride burnings, domestic abuse - everywhere, in every country, women were abused, isolated, silenced, imprisoned, controlled, punished, and killed. Sometimes, it seemed to Smita that the history of the world was written in female blood."

Smita, a young American Indian journalist, returns to India to cover a story about the murder and attempted murder of a couple in a village in a rural part of India. Abdul, a Muslim, and Meena, a Hindu, dared to fall in love and marry. Meena’s family has been dishonored and must pay. Her brothers kill Abdul and try to kill Meena. But Meena and their daughter survive.

Smita is plagued with the memories of the night her family fled India with no intention to ever return. While she has very negative views of India, her driver Mohan gracefully listens to her and expresses his love for and pride in his home country. Together, they confront the brutality against Abdul and Meena and the corrupt leadership that allows it to happen. Smita and Mohan both will have their views of India challenged.

This is a story of love, hope, cultural and religious clashes, sacrifice, and promises kept. The bravery of Meena, the callousness of Ammi (Meena’s mother-in-law) and the kind heart of Mohan will linger with me for some time.

I highly recommend this phenomenal book.

Wow! It may still be early into 2022, but this is definitely a Top 2022 Read for me! I've loved every book that Algonquin Books has invited me to read (and this one even came accompanied by some delicious mango candy!) and this is certainly no exception! It reels the reader in from the very start and soon makes it impossible to put it down. I definitely stayed up way too late into the night to finish this one!

It opens with Smita, who cuts her vacation in the Maldives short after a fellow journalist and friend breaks her hip in India. Smita has avoided returning to India since her family emigrated to America. She wants to flee even more when Shannon asks her help - not with her recovery, but with finishing the story that she is covering. In a rural part of India, Meena defied her brothers - first by working outside of the home, and then by falling in love and marrying a Muslim man. Her brothers deeply punish this transgression and the verdict on their trial is due any day.

Both Smita and Meena's stories unfold in a heart-wrenching and thought-provoking way. On some levels, this is a love story - but one that is severely contrasted against so much intolerance and hatred. The characters all come to life with rich development. This one had my crying, but I couldn't tear my eyes off the pages. The setting and its details - from the living conditions, smells and tastes, all vividly springs to life. While the plot hints as to where it's all going, I still found myself genuinely shocked. I really loved this emotional and powerful read. I can see why this was a Reese Witherspoon book club pick - there's plenty to discuss here and I think it shows a side of Hindu-Muslim relations that are not often seen in popular fiction. It's exquisitely written - I actually cannot believe that this is my first experience with this talented author. I am really excited to check out her earlier noels - and obviously anything that she writes in the future!

This is the second novel by Thrity Umrigar I've read—the other was The Story Hour—and it's left me eager to track down more of her work ASAP. In both books, Unrigar's central characters wrestle with the world around them and with their own assumptions and come to life with a depth that makes them fascinating.

Honor weaves together the stories of two women: Smita, born in India, but raised in the U.S., a peripatetic reporter willing to travel anywhere *except* India and Meena, a young Hindu woman who was happily married to a Muslim man until her brothers murdered him and attempted to murder her as well. Both women's stories combine devastating loss, isolation, and a fierce courage. Smita has more control over her circumstances than Meena does and has created for herself a stripped down life with few social ties. Meena's isolation has been enforced by others for years: first by her brothers and a village leader who objected her employment in a garment factory, then by those in her husband's home village, who blame her for his murder.

Honor includes two love stories: Meena's, which led her to take the enormous risk of an interfaith marriage, and Smita's which challenges the life she's carefully constructed for herself. In general, I'm a curmudgeon where romance is concerned, but the romance (if one can call it that in Honor) here is central to the women's identities and the plot.

Hindu-Muslim tensions in India predate the country's birth in its present form and regularly surface, as any quick search of news reporting will confirm. Religious violence has played a substantial role at significant moments in India's history, just as it has in the history of far too many nations. These tensions are more obvious in rural areas, but also impact India's major cities at times. In writing Honor, Umrigar has offered us a stark depiction of one slice of our current world that gives us a lens for viewing life in many parts of the globe, including the U.S.

Read this book for its depiction of religious tensions in India, for its relevance to other regions, and—most of all—for the story at its heart, full of both conflict and jope.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

Wow, this was a fantastic read! Honor is a highly emotional, heavy read. I was fully engrossed from start to finish, and this is one that I have continued to think about long after turning the final page. Definitely check this one out, if it isn’t already on your radar.

When Smita arrives in Mumbai she thinks she’s there to help a good friend undergoing surgery. Otherwise, even as a global journalist, she has never returned to the country her family left when she was a teenager. Now, in Thrity Umrigar’s new novel, Honor, she’s forced to confront her past while coming face-to-face with another young woman horribly impacted by the same forces in the present.

Meena is the other narrator in Honor and she is Smita’s opposite. From a small rural village, she is illiterate and desperately poor. Her world is controlled by men, namely her brothers. That is until she falls in love with and marries a Muslim. As Hindus this brings such shame to her brothers, they set her home on fire, killing her husband and disfiguring and maiming her. Meena now lives with her mother-in-law who blames her for her son’s death. With no resources or allies she still makes the extraordinary decision to bring charges against her brothers, despite the police having no interest in the case.

It turns out Smita’s friend doesn’t need her help in Mumbai, but wants her to cover the story’s verdict when it’s announced. This forces Smita to leave the relative security of a major cosmopolitan city for the utterly unfamiliar world of villages, where life is still lived as it was 20 years ago. Religion and the patriarchy rules, corruption is rampant all of which breeds violence; most often in the name of honor and most often perpetrated against women.

Smita travels with Mohan, a Mumbai native, who, as a man, offers the protection and language skills she needs. At the same time, she chafes against the implication that she can’t handle the situation on her own. Mohan’s love of India grates on her as well so much of their time in the car is spent sparring over her distaste for her homeland. Her arguments are reinforced by the behavior of the many men they come in contact with who will not let her register for a hotel room or will not speak to her directly, but they are contradicted by Mohan who shows her respect and pushes back against her treatment.

All of this could make Honor feel like a one-note, polarizing novel about the evils of fundamentalism in any faith and East versus West, but Umrigar is too gifted a writer to settle on the surface. Instead, as the novel progresses, she uses the lives and backgrounds of two women who are foreign to each other to illustrate the many true meanings of honor, from a father making a shocking decision for his family, to the promise made between women, to the courtship of Meena and Abdul, with its tender propriety and the depth of his respect for her.

Honor blends plot with character in a way to satisfy both readers who like more literary fiction and those who want more movement. Umrigar provides nuanced insight into two very different mindsets—Indian and American, but in a way that exposes the similarities we may not want to see. The same goes for the way she uses the word honor. One small word, but freighted with so much meaning and so easily abused. The brutality that transpires in the village is all done in the name of honor, but makes a mockery of the word. It’s nothing more than generations of unchecked male ego.

It’s in the uneducated, unsophisticated Meena that Umrigar illuminates the true meaning of honor. Both Smita and Meena fully occupy their stories, but even though Meena is a simple woman I found her narrative to be the most profound. Her moral code and inner strength are extraordinary. The intensity of emotion in Honor flows through her and off the page making her character and Honor a novel I’ll not soon forget.

'Honor' written by Indian American journalist Thrity Umrigar was one of my first reads of 2022. The story is about two women, Meera , an Indian woman living in rural parts of Maharashtra and Smita Agarwal, an Indian- American woman who had spent her early teens in India. The read starts on dark note where we come to know that Meera, a Hindu and her husband, a Muslim are victims of honour killing and hate crime.
The premise was very interesting but it fell short of many expectations that I had from it and these are my reasons- It is a very westernized perspective on the issue and I wish it could emphasize more on the behavioural aspects of Vithalgaon and its neighbouring villages. At some point in the story, it was mentioned that Vithalgaon is a outlayer when it comes to working women. I completely agree with the narrator's perspective that her "own" thoughts are ''completely biased and complicated''.
The book creates confusion in the beginning of the story as to: Is it a Hindu majority village or a Muslim village ? I was taken aback that terms like 'bloody famine victim', 'fucking racist' and 'like lepers' that were under artistic liberty to bring out cultural differences between Mohan and Smita.

As a journalist, reportage is necessary but it should never be biased. Calling it "India's cultural realities" not only cements popular western belief but also reduces the experience of 1.35 billion people to a sham.
Honestly, this book had so potential as it was dealing an important issue related to honour killing and crime against minorities in general , crimes against women, socio-economic stratification. I believe that this book wanted to touch all of these and therefore, most of the essence went away in blaming people, their behaviour and India in general.
The socio-political challenges of any country doesn't stand for its "culture". The book provides a myopic view of Maharashtra or India for that matter. If this was your first read from India, it should certainly not be your last.

I would like to thank @thrity_umrigar and @algonquinbooks for a copy of this book for an honest review.

This is classic Umrigar where she explores relationships and bonds between women and how society weighs on them. In many ways, this novel reflects so much of Umrigar's own life as a former journalist, a diasporic Indian writer, and a woman who straddles both eastern and western cultural sensibilities. Her depictions of Mumbai today, the city where I grew up and still return to often, reminded me of all that I love and hate about it. This is a typical Indian diasporic novel in some ways. But that's not always a negative thing, especially when the storytelling has been done with near-journalistic attention to factual details.

Smita Agarwal was born in India but moved to the US with her family when she was a teen. Something happened to her in India and, she never planned on returning to the place of her birth. Living in NYC and working as a foreign correspondent she is asked by a good friend, also a correspondent, who is hospitalized to come to her aid in India. It isn't until later that she learns that she won't be helping her friend to heal but, rather covering an important story about a Hindu woman named Meena who was attacked and disfigured by members of her own village after she married Abdul, a Muslim man. Abdul was burned to death by Meenas own brothers just four months into their marriage in what was considered to be an "honor killing."

I didn't know much about this story going into it and, although it is very well written and tells an important story, there was a bit too much shocking detail revealed IMO. I realize it is important not to bury the atrocities that happen around the world, I just don't think I was prepared for such a heavy read for my first book of 2022. Don't get me wrong, there are some lighter moments in the novel but readers should be prepared for some dark plot lines.
https://bibliophilebythesea.blogspot.com/2022/01/my-week-and-some-2022-book-reviews.html

In book one, Umrigar captures right from the first chapter what it is to land in India and be assaulted by the sounds, sights and smells. Smita, an ex-pat journalist experiences the crush of the markets, the opulence of the city, the reality of the poverty of the slums and the intense beliefs of those around her. She experiences layers the kindness of the people with the intense national and cultural pride as she familiarizes us with the varied cultures of the people of the story she is about to tell. I appreciated that we saw the opinions of the local people, all with different backgrounds, as well as one of an American, which made it more relatable to me personally.

In book two, we get to the heart breaking story of Meena. She is a woman under the thumb of some very antiquated thinking men. Under the thumb of her brothers, she makes her first stretch for autonomy by getting a job at a local factory. The brothers feel only men should work and that she and her sister are bringing ill omens to their family. When she falls in love with a man at the factory, she is once again challenging their authority to make the match they desire. Worst of all, the man she falls for is a Muslim and they feel this is the greatest dishonor to their Hindu family. When she becomes pregnant, the brothers take justice into their own hands causing the death of Meena's husband and her disfigurement. It is the trial of these brothers that brings Smita to India.

In book three, we see what truly brings all these characters together. Their arcs and realizations are really powerful. I really loved Mohan’s way of describing how he had been so proud of his country and “asleep” to the truth of the way some people are forced to live. He is so many of us with our heads down.

I started this one on a flight and I didn’t want to get up when the plane landed because I was so interested in the end of the story.

Thanks to Algonquin for this gifted copy. All opinions above are my own.

This is the story of Meena whose husband was burned alive by her very own brothers for being Muslim and marrying their Hindu sister. This is also the story of Smita, trying her very best to cover Meena’s story and praying for justice.

That’s a lot. And this story started off much slower than I was expecting. This is the first book I’ve read on the Hindu Muslim conflict in India and am in no way positioned to comment on it. There’s also SO little I can share about my feelings for this book without spoiling major plot. Here’s what I can say… around 200 pages in I could not put this book down until I finished, but it was also absolutely horrifying to read. I had to message people I knew had finished already because this book demands to be talked about. I occasionally had the thought of it feeling slightly heavy handed, but gripping none the less. And the courage of the women in this book is a marvel.

Another powerful, moving novel by Umrigar, as it will stay with you past the last page. Smita is a journalist, an Indian American who never intended to go back to India after her family left 20 years before. When her friend needs help with a story, Smita becomes enmeshed in the story of Meena, a Hindu woman from a small village who dared to marry a Muslim man. Chapters alternate with Meena telling her story, and with Smita, as she meets Mohan and they both try to help Meena and her daughter. Smita also has a story to tell, and as it unfolds, your stomach will drop. I love Umrigar’s writing, and the importance of the stories she tells equals the feeling that you can’t out it down once you start. Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book. A must read.

4.5 stars!

TW// Rape, sexual violence, violence, murder, death, sexism.

Honor is about two women, Smita and Meena, whose lives become so intricately intertwined that after a while, it becomes difficult to point out where one story starts and where the other ends.

Smita, an America-based journalist, is called to Mumbai to cover the story of a burn victim because her colleague is unwell. Coming to Mumbai is going to open old wounds and bring her secrets spilling out, but she figures Meena’s story is an important one to tell. Meena, who married a Muslim man, and was promptly disowned by her Hindu family. Meena, whose house was set on fire by her own brothers for ‘tarnishing’ their family name by marrying a Muslim man and whose husband died in that fire. Meena, whose case has now been taken up by a lawyer who wants to bring justice to her, but is that the lawyer’s intention?

When Smita begins work on this story, little does she know how all of this is going to affect her. Little does she know how her life is going to change in so many ways, that she just cannot count and comprehend.

Thrity Umrigar’s ‘Honor’ is a searing story of honor killings, religious fundamentalism and extremism, and the worst of humanity. It was my first book of 2022 and reading it has broken something inside of me. Every time I read a book like this, I lose faith in humanity because I know that the extent of these barbarisms isn’t fictionalized. And I gag on my own runaway thoughts, the what-ifs, the whys, the hows. The hypocrisy, the utter assholery of men trying to act like God wrote the bloody, violent rules that they think they need to act upon. Of them saying that women need to serve them because God willed them to be. Of them disowning women for working. Of them slapping, raping, burning, killing women for ‘dishonoring’ them by loving someone from a different religion.

Who the heck gave them the right to do that? Where does this god complex come from? How do they figure themselves to be at the top of the pecking order? Who gave them the right to oppress women? Just men, thousands of years ago, who were so full of themselves that they thought it right to filter down these thoughts through millennia and generations. It’s extremely frustrating and angering.

‘Honor’ is a book that will raise all these questions and will anger you to no end. Thrity Umrigar’s writing is pregnant with horror as it describes the barbarian behavior of men in the name of religion that makes you want to claw at their faces, to slap them. But they are blinded by their faith, their religion. They rape, kill, and dishonor women, all in the name of honor. And irony dies a few million deaths every day.

Thank you, Thrity Umrigar, for writing this important book, for your firebrand writing, for the unapologetically frank descriptions, and for tackling this subject with such sensitivity.

Smita returns to India to cover the story of Meena, a Hindu woman attacked by her family and village for marrying a Muslim man. She never planned to return from the United States, and here she must face a society where tradition matters more than love or individual needs. Smita has her own painful secrets and is drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets on assignment. Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, and Smita tries to save her.

I wasn't sure how much detail was going to go into the honor killing at the heart of this novel, or how I would take it. Meena's husband was burned alive, and she was horribly scarred and mutilated when she tried to put out the flames. Left with her mother-in-law and toddler daughter, she's berated daily, shunned, and demeaned by everyone she had ever known. Her village of birth was intensely conservative, to the point that her drunken and hostile brothers had more power and respect than she and her sister did just by nature of their sex. This is a situation that Smita is aware of, having been born and raised in India; she considers herself American, having lived there since she was fourteen, when something terrible had happened to her and her family. We don't learn what it is until later in the novel, and it's another flavor of religious fervor leading to horror and dehumanization just because the instigators could do it.

Smita is forced to face her memories of the past, just as she's forced to look at what life is like for women in rural India. For all that it's a modern country, much of it hasn't moved forward yet. Rigid religious and gender roles remain in place, and the violence that she witnesses and experiences only proves that it's very difficult to erase that power structure when those who benefit from it work hard to keep it. While she sees this and is leery of India, there are still some benefits and improvements in the modern era. She struggles with this, given her own traumatic history. There's no easy solution, and her indecision is treated with as much respect and honor as Meena's part of the story. Their two lives touch on and reflect each other, making for an incredibly powerful story.

I found this to be a beautifully profound read. Smita returns to the India of her youth to help out a fellow journalist.she is charged to interview Meena who has been burned by her brothers for marrying outside of her faith. The novel pierced my heart and I fell in love with it.

HONOR is one of the new releases in January that  I recommend picking up. 

HONOR follows Smita, an Indian-American journalist, who unexpectedly returns to India and ends up covering a story about Meena, a Hindu woman attacked by her family and community over her interfaith marriage with a Muslim man. 

ｈｏｎ·ｏｒ　ｋｉｌｌ·ｉｎｇ
The killing of a relative, especially a girl or woman, who is perceived to have brought dishonor on the family.

HONOR begins when Meena, having survived an attempted honor killing by her family, seeks justice for her dead husband, who burned to death after being set on fire by Meena’s brothers. Umrigar doesn’t shy away from the brutal, horrific nature of honor-based violence, making HONOR a hard-hitting and timely read about how traditional values, religion and culture intersect with women’s rights in contemporary India.

Why you should read HONOR 👇🏾

1️⃣ Meena’s fate reflects the real-world backlash women in India face over intercaste and interfaith marriages (see Slides 3, 4, and 5). 

2️⃣ HONOR presents a balanced portrayal of India through Mohan’s eyes, which imparts a bigger message about how privilege colors our perspectives*. 

*Mohan, Smita’s love interest, is an upper-caste Hindu man.

3️⃣ Drawing from Umrigar’s background, HONOR captures the complicated relationship between immigrants and their home country through Smita’s return to India, the country she was born and raised in after leaving as a teenager.

4️⃣ HONOR will make you question the purpose and ethics of journalism.

In particular, HONOR raises questions about strict adherence to the journalistic standards of objectivity and non-intervention, e.g., whether journalists should remain passive bystanders while covering traumatic events.

“But as Cliff had reminded her, it was a fine line they walked between journalism and voyeurism. Poverty porn. Is that what she did, ultimately, in her travels to that far-flung places of the world—sell poverty porn to her white middle-class readers back home? So that they could feel better about their own “civilized” lives and country, even as they tsked-tsked while reading about oppressed women like Meena? Smita herself had repeated the platitudes about the humanizing effects of literature and narrative journalism, how each medium cultivated empathy in readers. But toward what end? The world remained as sad and brutal a place as ever. Was it simply vanity that made her believe that her work made a difference?”

Beautifully written, Honor is a powerful and moving book about love, sacrifice, and loss.

Indian American journalist, Smita has returned to India, believing she has been called there to take care of her friend and fellow journalist, Shannon. Upon visiting her friend in the hospital, she learns she has been called there to cover the case of Meena - a Hindu woman who has been ostracized and later attacked by both members of her village and her own brothers for marrying a Muslim man. It is a gut wrenching and heartbreaking case.

Smita is instantly reminded about how good she has it in America. India was once her home. She and her family left India when she was fourteen-years old to move to the United States. How will she feel about being back?

Tradition. What happens when you go against it?
Honor. What does it mean to you? What does it mean to others?

While Meena's fate hangs in the balance, Smita comes up against misogamy, tradition, and where morally reprehensible acts are allowed to happen. As Smita begins to feel an attraction to Mohan, her driver and translator, she begins to realize what freedoms she has vs. the lack of freedom Meena has. The lack of freedom women in India and other cultures have.

Again, this was a beautifully written, thought provoking and moving novel. It touches on love, family, attraction, honor, tradition, hatred, sacrifice, betrayal, ignorance, bribery, and hope. This book made me appreciate the freedom and choices that I get to make in my own life. It also serves a looking glass into what life is like for women in other countries who do not have the same freedoms that I do. Where Honor killings are still the norm, where those in power turn a blind eye, and where women have no voice.

The descriptions in this book are vibrant and lush. As the author described the heat, the hostility, and the beauty - I could feel and imagine it all. I was moved by the story, saddened by the injustice of things, and felt hope for other things. Not always an easy book to read, but isn't that the case of books that describe things as they are? That make us take a long hard look at injustice and the mistreatment of others.

I found myself highlining various beautiful passages and re-reading others. This was my first book by Thrity Umrigar and I look forward to reading more of her work.

Honor a MUST READ which I highly recommend.


Powerful. Moving. Riveting.

4.5 stars

Thank you to Algonquin Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thrity Umrigar’s new novel Honor is a braid of two stories that mirror the clash between Muslims and Hindus that has plagued India for generations. At the center of the story is a young wife who seeks justice after her brothers kill her husband and maim her for marrying outside of their religion. American reporter, Smita, whose family had to flee their homeland for safety, returns to report on the trial’s verdict. She is accompanied by a Mumbai man, Mohan, born to wealth and privilege, who loves his flawed country.

This book is a braid of two stories which mirror each other in fictionalizing the cultural clash between Muslims and Hindus that has plagued India for generations. Meena is fiercely protective of her child, all she has left of her very brief marriage. Smita has her traumatic story, too, which she eventually reveals to Mohan. She breaks the cardinal rule for journalists of not becoming emotionally involved in a story. But meeting Meena and her daughter, and the brothers and village elder who orchestrated the attack, she struggles for objectivity.

An involving story that takes the western reader far out of the comfort zone.

This is an amazing book and once you start it, you will not want to put it down. I have read this author before and I love her work. This is no exception. I was immediately drawn into the story and I could not read fast enough as I had to know what would happen to these characters. It was a hard read at times but such a good reminder not to take for granted having so many choices and options in our everyday lives. For so many there is a “lack of choice.” Bravery, love, and compassion are woven into the story making it feel universal as it is applicable to many situations all over the world. It is the perfect novel to start 2022 and to see how sometimes good can eventually come from devastating events. This is an incredible read and I highly recommend it to everyone. ❤️ Posted at Instagram @carolinehoppereads and goodreads

I was given an advanced copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This was a very moving and sometimes hard to read book about the harsh realities of religious persecution. I connected with the narrator Smita right away and was swept away in the story. Highly recommend.