Short Synopsis
Ants Among Elephants is the stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary.

Full Synopsis
Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible transformation from student and labor organizer to famous poet and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother's battles with caste and women's oppression.

A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.

"The narration is excellently performed by Soneela Nankani." -Library Journal

"[A] brilliant debut . . . Gidla’s work is an essential contribution to contemporary Indian literature." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review

“Unsentimental, deeply poignant . . . Ants Among Elephants gives readers an unsettling and visceral understanding of how discrimination, segregation and stereotypes have endured." ---New York Times Book Review

"A remarkable family history . . . Ants Among Elephants may well be eye-opening not just for non-Indians-who will recoil in righteous horror from the intimate details of caste discrimination-but also for many Indians, for whome the lives of Untouchables take place out of sight . . . In this book of nonfiction one reads of real people fighting real cruelty with real courage and grace." ---Wall Street Journal

“Ants Among Elephants is a fascinating and moving portrayal of one family's struggle to live.” ---Shelf Awareness

Publishers Weekly Bestseller

Publishers Weekly Review