Nayantara Sahgal is one of India's best-known writers and thinkers. She is the recipient of the Sinclair Prize for Fiction, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. A member of the Sahitya Akademi's advisory board for English till she resigned during the Emergency, Sahgal served on the jury of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1990 and 1991. She has held fellowships in the United States at the Bunting Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Humanities Center. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded an honorary doctorate in literature by the University of Leeds in 1997. She is associated with the founding of the People's Union for Civil Liberties and served as its vice-president during the 1980s.
This unusually prescient novel is set in the early post-Independence years, when a new republic eagerly looks forward to a future full of hope. Rakesh, a Foreign Service officer who had grown up at a time when young men were ardent nationalists, returns to Delhi after a six-year absence to find many changes. He meets the new Advisor on Foreign Affairs, the controversial Kalyan Sinha, and is once again drawn to the magnetic personality of the politician whose ruthless manipulations are, in a way, a precursor to the moral corruption of the years to come. Vintage Sahgal, This Time of Morning is a riveting work of fiction that captures the realities of a country in transition.
