Shobhaa De

Socialite Evenings is Shobha De's first novel. It describes Mumbai high society and explores the lives of bored, rich housewives trapped in loveless marriages and engaging in ill-fated extramarital affairs, smug selfish husbands who use their wives more for social respectability than for love, fashionable parties, …

Vintage Shobhaa Dé, with scathing take-offs on everything, from the caste system to male chauvinism, from sex to social pretension . . . in other words, it's all great fun'-Economic Times Watching the preparations for independent India's 60th birthday in 2007, Dé-poised then to enter her own sixth decade-was struck by …