The Hope Factory

Where innocence, deceit and love collide

Anand is a Bangalore success story: successful, well-married, rich. At least, that's how he appears. But if his little factory is to grow, he needs land and money and, in the New India, neither of these is easy to find.
Kamala, Anand's family's maid, lives perilously close to the edge of disaster. She and her clever teenage son have almost nothing, and their small hopes for self-betterment depend on the contentment of Anand's wife: a woman to whom whims come easily.
But Kamala's son keeps bad company. Anand's marriage is in trouble. And the murky world where crime and wealth and politics meet is a dangerous place for good men, and those who rely on them

Praise for Lavanya Sankaran's The Red Carpet

'By the end of [the] very first story, people half a world away have been transformed into complete human beings, full of frailties and fragile self-regard, achingly sympathetic. That's why The Red Carpet reads like a revelation. . . . I recommend this book so highly!' Carolyn See, The Washington Post

'Throughout these fine, articulate stories, Lavanya Sankaran brings to life the new and old social worlds of Bangalore. More important, she uses the quiet dignity of her characters to reveal what's universal in the wide rift between generations. It's an unusually elegant and nuanced portrait' John Dalton, author of The Inverted Forest

'[An] animated debut . . . [These stories] are memorable for their subtle wit and convincing evocation of a dynamic world' Publishers Weekly