I am grateful to my insightful and probing editor and publisher Anne Collins, at Knopf Random Canada, for taking the characters to her heart and sharing my vision. Many thanks to Angelika Glover for her diligent and careful copyediting, and to the managing editor, Deirdre Molina, and to vice president, creative director, Scott Richardson, for designing this book.
My agent Samantha Haywood marketed The Selector of Souls, and offered guidance, support and enthusiasm. David Bennett, Meghan Macdonald and the rest of the team at Transatlantic Literary Agency supported her efforts. Attorney Marian Hebb has watched out for me since 1998.
Readers familiar with the works of Madhu Kishwar, Margaret Abraham, Patricia and Roger Jeffrey, and Amartya Sen, will recognize background reading. I am indebted to Rabindranath Tagore’s diaries (1932) for the airplane metaphor for two-dimensional detachment ethics.
Among the many books and magazines I consulted, I recommend: the online archives of The Economic and Political Weekly of India; Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Himachal Pradesh by M.R. Thakur; The Power Behind the Shame edited by Janet Chawla; Divine Enterprise by Lisa McKean; The Body Hunters by Sonia Shah; New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament by Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik; Weapons of Peace, by Raj Chengappa; Guru English by Srinivas Aramundan and Anupam Rao’s The Caste Question. For global histories of sex selection, I recommend Fatal Misconception by Matthew Connelly; Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl; and The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World by Michelle Goldberg.
“Chhoti si Aasha” was written by P. K. Mishra. “Zindagi Aur Kuch bhi Nahin” was written by Lakshmikant Pyarelal. Ramesh Menon’s translation from Canto II/16-21 of the Bhagvad Gita is used by permission of Rupa Publications. The quote from Song of Krishna (5) by Viswantha Satyanarayana translated by Velcheru Rao is reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. A more extensive bibliography is available at www.ShaunaSinghBaldwin.com.
SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN was born in Montreal and grew up in India. The Tiger Claw, her second novel, was a finalist for the Giller Prize in 2004 and is forthcoming as a film. Her first, What the Body Remembers, was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and was awarded the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean region). It has been translated into fourteen languages. She is also the author of English Lessons and Other Stories, the collection We Are Not in Pakistan and co-author of A Foreign Visitor’s Survival Guide to America. Her short stories have won literary awards in the United States, Canada and India. She holds an MFA from Marquette University in Milwaukee, where she currently lives with her husband.
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