Book Box: Anna Karenina to Na Hanyate: Who gets to tell a marriage story?

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina depicts Darya’s suffering from her husband Stepan Oblonsky’s adultery while his life remains minimally disrupted, highlighting unequal consequences of betrayal.

Maitreyi Devi’s Na Hanyate recounts her romance with a Romanian student hosted by her father, who later forced her to marry an older man after the student was banished.

The article examines who controls narratives of marriage, focusing on how women’s voices are often silenced or distorted by patriarchal structures in literature and life.

Devi’s book responds to the foreign student’s fictionalized version of their story, asserting her own truth against his account.