Priyanka Chopra, Sienna Miller to Star in Film Adaptation of Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s Cross-Cultural Novel ‘Secret Daughter’
- To be written for Amazon by filmmaker and writer Shruti Ganguly, it will be directed by Singaporean director Anthony Chen.
Indo-Canadian Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s cross-cultural novel “Secret Daughter” is being adapted into film for Amazon, starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sienna Miller, Deadline has reported. The adaptation by filmmaker and writer Shruti Ganguly will be directed by Singaporean director Anthony Chen. Sunset Lane Media’s David Beaubaire and Vanessa Lanci will produce along with Chopra Jonas’ and Mary Rohlich’s Purple Pebble Pictures, Miller and Tori Cook.
The 2010 international bestselling novel is Somaya Gowda’s first book. It explores powerfully and poignantly the emotional terrain of motherhood, loss, identity, and love through the experiences of two families—one Indian, one American—and the child that binds them together.
Somer is a newly married physician in San Francisco who makes the devastating discovery that she will never be able to have children. The same year in India, a poor mother makes the heartbreaking choice to save her newborn daughter’s life by giving her away. Kavita will be haunted by that decision every moment for the rest of her life. Asha is the child who is adopted out of a Mumbai orphanage who binds the destinies of the two women. The novel follows both families, invisibly connected until Asha’s journey of self-discovery leads her back to India.
Somaya Gowda was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. In college, she spent a summer as a volunteer in an Indian orphanage, which seeded the idea for her first novel, “Secret Daughter,” published in 2010. It was a New York Times and #1 international bestseller and was translated into over 30 languages. It was a finalist for the South African Boeke Literary Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
She holds an MBA from Stanford University, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain scholar. She has served on the Advisory Board of the Children’s Defense Fund and is a Patron of Childhaven International, the organization for which she volunteered in India. She lives in California with her husband and children.
Meanwhile, HBO is adapting Indo-Canadian author, Rohinton Mistry’s critically acclaimed, award-winning novel “A Fine Balance” into a seven-part series, to be written and directed by “The Lunchbox” fame “Ritesh Batra and produced by Blueprint Pictures and Northwood Entertainment.
“A Fine Balance” is Mistry’s third novel. It was first published by Canada’s McLelland and Stewart in 1995. It centers on a rich widow, two tailors and a young student from vastly different parts of Indian society whose lives intersect in a tiny apartment — traverses the political landscape in India from the country’s independence in 1947 through to the 21-month state of emergency called by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi between 1975 and 1977.