They are bad with directions; they never know when the credit card bill is due. They have perfected the art of turning over a new leaf tomorrow. Meet the vague women in this delightful first novel that doesn t star a woman looking for the right man because she s already found him! At twenty-two, Sharmila Chatterjee has just married her sweetheart of a few years, Abhimanyu Mishra, a somewhat eccentric if handsome twenty-three-and-a-half year old with obscure academic interests and a small fellowship that never arrives on time. They start a household in a tiny rented flat, learning to fend for themselves in the big, bad and snotty world of south Delhi, with penny-pinching landlords, some romance, and a lot of anxiety. At fifty-two, Indira Sen is not sure just how she meandered to where she finds herself now. A senior government officer and single mother, she lives with her daughter and three opinionated old people in a rambling house, drives a battered car, and has a history of credit-card induced shopaholism. The Vague Woman s Handbook is a story told with equal parts of humour, hysteria and tenderness, about the sparkling friendship between two women as they hurtle through life and its mini-crises while trading secrets in the art of survival.

About the Author
Devapriya Roy has degrees in English literature and performance studies from Presidency College, Kolkata, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and adds a languishing Ph.D to her list of must-finishes. Once upon a time she was the Karpin girl after which she worked as an editor. Sahitya Akademi and Routledge Books. Currently she is writing The Heat and Dust Project, a book of travels through India on a very very tight budget, along with her husband Saurav Jha.