India, July 16 -- The fridge in Geetanjali Shree's apartment in East Delhi's Patparganj is empty. In the bedroom cupboard, hangers hang empty.

For more than two decades, this was the home the author shared with her husband, Sudhir, a historian of modern India. Here she wrote Khali Jagah, Tirohit, many short stories, and the early drafts of Ret Samadhi, which, in Daisy Rockwell's English translation as Tomb of Sand, became the first Hindi novel to win the International Booker Prize.

Geetanjali Shree left this apartment during the first Covid lockdown to be with her mother in Gurugram, where her younger sister, Jayanti, lives. She and Sudhir never returned to live in the old apartment, choosing instead to stay at the sister's place whenev...