Nectar in a Sieve was the first of her novels to be published, although it was the third one she had written. When it appeared in 1954, the novel was greeted as a masterful picture of life in the unfamiliar world of India’s villages. [ It became a worldwide best-seller and was translated into seventeen languages. In her next novel, Some Inner Fury (1955), Markandaya explores the relationship of an educated Indian woman and her English sweetheart.
