CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ’s The Great Divide: A Novel is the story of one of the most impressive feats in engineering history: the construction of the Panama Canal. It explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers – those who did the grueling work and have yet rarely been acknowledged by history. In RUTHVIKA RAO’s The Fertile Earth: A Novel, Vijaya, daughter of ancestral aristocrats whose power over their villagers is absolute, and Krishna, son of a widowed servant in her household, forge a beautiful and dangerous bond. When years later a violent uprising arrives, they’re forced to navigate their differences in land ownership and class.

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