new-age HEROES

Three formidable writers, three powerful voices, three distinct styles—Elizabeth Gilbert, Leïla Slimani and Avni Doshi tell Neville Bhandara why they do what they do

- Neville Bhandara

The afternoon sun lights up the colonnaded chequerboard-marbled hallways of the Rambagh Palace, Jaipur. Built in 1835 as the residence of the queen’s favourite handmaiden, it later became home to Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II and his queen, Jaipur’s most famous royal, the glamorous Maharani Gayatri Devi, who captured hearts and headlines from Mumbai to New York. The ‘people’s maharani’, years ahead of her time, delighted in defying convention and making her voice heard. Perhaps it is fitting, then, that I am here on a crisp, pre-pandemic January afternoon to meet three women who are also unafraid to speak their minds: the writers Elizabeth Gilbert, who with Eat, Pray, Love (Bloomsbury) shook up the somewhat staid genre of travel writing by delving within; Leïla Slimani, the literary sensation whose Lullaby (Faber & Faber) won her France’s highest literary honour, the Prix Goncourt; and newcomer Avni Doshi, whose Girl In White Cotton (HarperCollins) was hailed as one of last year’s most illuminating debuts. Gilbert is the first to arrive, greeting me with a warm “Hi, I’m Liz.” Doshi breezes in next, lively and zoned-in. Slimani comes straight from representing her country at a diplomatic meeting (she’s also the personal representative of the French president Emmanuel Macron to the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie). Over the next hour, at a time when we have not yet been forced to contend with COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown, Gilbert, Slimani and Doshi reveal why they write what they do, why honest women are to be feared, and why, when wielded correctly, the power of literature is universal.