Veiled Honour

Book excerpt: Veiled Honour tells the story of women forced into loveless marriage, and their conflict between family duty and their desire for freedom, love, and education. It echoes with the gossip of women caught between traditions of arranged marriage and romantic alternatives offered by pulp fiction and Bollywood. The men are victims of their own private illusions of wealth and status. A battle of the sexes takes place within fortunes and frustrations of intersecting families. Set in Fiji in a post-colonial era, and partly in Australia, the characters' lives are affected by foreign contacts and changes happening within society. The book is rich in social history, with a movement of people of diverse cultures on a tropical island, a colourful and 'idyllic paradise.' Satya Colpani poignantly reveals through dialogue and humour, the way the lives of Indo-Fijian women are largely determined by their situation in a particular time and place.