Winner of the Silver Nautilus Award for Journalism & Investigative Reporting "A book that truly is impossible to put down.”—Washington Post "This remarkable debut is so deeply reported, elegantly written, and profoundly transporting that it reads like a novel you can’t put down. It’s both a nuanced and intimate evocation of Indian culture, and a provocative and exciting meditation on marriage itself."—Katie Roiphe, author of The Violet Hour In the vein of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, an intimate, deeply reported and revelatory examination of love, marriage, and the state of modern India—as witnessed through the lives of three very different couples in today’s Mumbai. In twenty-first-century India, tradition is colliding with Western culture, a clash that touches the lives of everyday Indians from the wealthiest to the poorest. While ethnicity, class, and religion are influencing the nation’s development, so too are pop culture and technology—an uneasy fusion whose impact is most evident in the institution of marriage. The Heart Is a Shifting Sea introduces three couples whose relationships illuminate these sweeping cultural shifts in dramatic ways: Veer and Maya, a forward-thinking professional couple whose union is tested by Maya’s desire for independence; Shahzad and Sabeena, whose desperation for a child becomes entwined with the changing face of Islam; and Ashok and Parvati, whose arranged marriage, made possible by an online matchmaker, blossoms into true love. Though these three middle-class couples are at different stages in their lives and come from diverse religious backgrounds, their stories build on one another to present a layered, nuanced, and fascinating mosaic of the universal challenges, possibilities, and promise of matrimony in its present state. Elizabeth Flock has observed the evolving state of India from inside Mumbai, its largest metropolis. She spent close to a decade getting to know these couples—listening to their stories and living in their homes, where she was privy to countless moments of marital joy, inevitable frustration, dramatic upheaval, and whispered confessions and secrets. The result is a phenomenal feat of reportage that is both an enthralling portrait of a nation in the midst of transition and an unforgettable look at the universal mysteries of love and marriage that connect us all.

Cultural anthropologist Serena Nanda mines a wide range of ethnographic research to examine the patterns of love, marriage, sexuality, and family unique to eight cultures around the world. After reviewing changing patterns in the United States, readers are taken to China, India, Brazil, Iran, Indonesia, Nigeria, the South Pacific, and Nepal to explore traditions and transformations and the intertwining dynamics of kinship, class, politics, religion, and gender roles in love and marriage. An additional chapter traces the diversity of LGBTQ relationships, with contemporary examples drawn from the US, Indonesia, and India. A valuable summary chapter features a brief analysis of similar and different cultural configurations. Nanda’s ethnographically rich examples and fresh perspective will challenge readers to understand that their own culture is not natural or superior but rather just one of many possibilities adapted to specific environments and subject to changes.

A ground-breaking look at the sexual revolution that is beginning to sweep through urban India. The National Bestseller India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century is a ground-breaking look at the sexual revolution that is starting to sweep through urban India. Bestselling author Ira Trivedi travelled from Shilling in the northeast to Chennai in the south, Konark in the east to Mumbai in the west and over a dozen other cities and towns in order to gain unprecedented insights into changing sexual habits, marriage and love everywhere in the country. The book explores the mating habits of young Indians on college campuses and in offices, examines the new face of Indian pornography and prostitution, probes India's gay revolution and delves into history, economics and sociology to try and understand how the nation that gave the world the Kamasutra could have become a closed, repressed society with a shockingly high incidence of rape and violence against women the dark underside to the greater sexual freedom that men and women in our cities have begun to enjoy today. Trivedi goes deep into one of the most enduring institutions of Indian society marriage and investigates how it is faring in modern times. She interviews marriage brokers, astrologers, lawyers, relationship counsellors, 'love commandos', parents and nervous young brides and grooms, amongst others, to present a nuanced picture of the state of marriage in the country. She discovers that love marriages are skyrocketing and even the age-old arranged marriage is undergoing a transformation. Also on the rise are divorces, extra-marital affairs, open marriages, live-in-relationships and the like. Supporting her eye-opening reportage with hundreds of interviews, detailed research, authoritative published surveys and discussions with experts on various aspects of sexuality and marriage, Trivedi has written a book that is often startling, sometimes controversial, but is always entertaining and original.

Most couples — because they watch so many of their peers divorce and are themselves the products of failed marriages — don't have many successful long-term-relationship role models. Parenting and communication issues are perennial, while some challenges, like increasingly 24-7 work lives and economic hardships, mark the current decade. Despite all this, psychotherapist and clinical social worker Marcia Naomi Berger asserts that most couples can make love last — they just need to learn how. Berger answers this need with a deceptively simple prescription: have an interruption-free thirty-minute (or even shorter) meeting each week and follow an agenda that includes the kind of appreciation and planning for fun that foster intimacy and pave the way for collaborative conflict resolution. Berger has refined these techniques while working with hundreds of couples — with results that are both practical and profound.

“He never wants to touch me any longer, Natasha. It's like he's impotent or something.” “That's not impotence, that's just what being married is like!” Raising three beautiful children in her beautiful Bombay home with her aristocratic husband of 15 years – every bit the prince you read about in fairy tales – Natasha has it all. But when her closest friend drops the bombshell that she's isn't entirely fulfilled by her family and is having an affair, Natasha begins to ask some difficult questions about her own seemingly perfect life. From the bestselling author Shunali Shroff comes a novel about being a wife, a mother and the woman you used to be before that. Featured in 50 Books to Look Out for in 2019 by Huffington Post

The Indian marriage is burning. In this groundbreaking study-the first clinical andcultural portrait of its kind-Shaifali Sandhya explores the intimate lives of middle class Indianhusbands and wives living in India and abroad and looks at what is causing this breakdown.Interviewing countless couples, using current research, and looking deeply at the key areas inrelationships which cause conflict-sex, money, family-she draws a devastating picture of themodern Indian marriage. " 80% of divorces are initiated by women. " 94% of Indian couples say they are happy in their relationships but a majority of themsay they would not marry the same person if they had a chance to replay their lives. " 1/3rd of Indian couples say they are dissatisfied with their sex life. " Most couples call the early years of their marriage the honeymoon years . For Indiancouples they are usually the worst. Hardhitting, eyeopening, and completely riveting, Love will Follow takes you into the hearts andminds of Indian men and women. Full of moving stories, fascinating statistics, and insights, it couldchange the way you see your relationship-and your life.