"In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative among its saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts a different kind of human time is happening, a soiled simultaneity that does not differentiate between the petrolcolored puddles and the fractured dreams of those who navigate them. Fiends last mentioned...

"In Bangalore, India, five young women fight to save their homes, which are really only shacks and lean-tos, in a slum named "Heaven," which the city wants to bulldoze in order to accommodate its growing tech industry"--

In a career that began in 1935, Ms. Godden published some 70 novels, children's books, memoirs, biographies and collections of poetry and stories, many set in India, where she spent her childhood and had her first success as a writer. She also had the experience, rare for most authors, of seeing two of her most widely admired novels, ''Black Narcissus'' and ''The River,'' turned into films that became classics.