Upward mobility through marriage is the prevailing theme in Polite Society by Mahesh Rao. The heroine, Ania Khurana, and her story are inspired by Jane Austen's Emma, and Polite Society pays suitable homage to Emma Woodhouse. It also takes off in a flamboyant new direction with lavish parties, dazzling homes and characters one might find in a Bollywood movie.
Ania lives with her widowed father and her aging aunt Renu on Delhi's most prestigious street. The Khuranas sit atop the city's wealthiest class, blessed with every luxury imaginable, but Ania is bored, lonely and searching for meaning in her life. She catches the matchmaking bug after introducing Renu to a distinguished colonel who rescues her from spinsterhood. It seems only logical that she should also look for a husband for her "poor" friend Dimple. So preoccupied is she with sharpening her matchmaking skills that she neglects to consider what Dimple might want for herself. It takes the arrival of the colonel's handsome nephew from New York for Ania to realize that she is no love expert after all.
Kenyan-born Rao (The Smoke Is Rising), who lives in the U.K., traveled to India to research and write Polite Society. In Delhi, he immersed himself in social gatherings where he mingled with gossipy society matrons and others on the highest rung of the social ladder, cultivating the cunning observations and clever humor that would launch his American debut. Under the surface glamour of Polite Society lies a compelling story about the universal need to love and be loved, and the emotional fallibility of even the most outwardly successful people. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer