The Sleeping Dictionary - Softcover

The Sleeping Dictionary, my latest novel, is my first  historical suspense novel set in India. 'Why India?' a lot of people have asked, since I have a long-running mystery series set in Japan. I was not born in India, but my father was, and I've enjoyed long visits to his family hometown of Calcutta since childhood.
Calcutta's had a tough rap for poverty in a lot of fiction and films. Having been there so many times, I see more: a dynamic city of writers and artists, spectacular Indian and British colonial architecture, delicious cuisine, and political intrigue. It was once called the "City of Palaces" and was the capitol of British India until the early 1900s. Then the British government built New Delhi as its headquarters to get away from Calcutta's unpredictable and unruly freedom fighters. Many young female high school and college students were active protesters, couriers, and even soldiers in the movement to free India from British rule. I'm hoping to share this, as well as what the situation felt like for the British civil servants who believed that by enforcing strict laws in India, they would strengthen the empire and uplift Indian people as well. Whenever I start writing a book, I always know the location and themes I want to explore. What takes much longer is finding the right characters to keep me interested. After thinking for some time, the narrator seemed to whisper her name in my ear. She is a Bengali woman first introduced in 1930 as a poor but happy 10-year-old farmer's daughter nicknamed Pom. She goes through an incredible series of adventures, and by story's end, she's metamorphosed Kamala, a mature 27-year-old lady who's weathered a famine, war, childbirth and marriage...but is still struggling with how to recognize and share her past. It's a love-story, mother-daughter story, and political espionage--with recipes at the end.The book took me almost four years to write. By the time I was done, I realized that Kamala's journey from degradation to intellectual and social heights mirrored India's own route from a powerless colony to the world's largest democracy. I do hope you come along for the ride--let me know what you think.

Sujata Massey is an Edgar and Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark Award nominee and winner of the Agatha and the Macavity Award for her ten Rei Shimura mystery novels set in Japan. Born in England to an Indian father and a German mother, Sujata Massey grew up mostly in the United States and earned her BA from the Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars program. She then worked as a reporter at The Baltimore Sun before marrying and moving to Japan. She now lives in Baltimore with her husband and children.