Latitudes of Longing

What a beautiful, inspiring, deep, insightful novel. Loved every word, every sentence… It\’s a book that demands of you, because it jumps from story to story, and there are stories on the stories…You cannot get distracted! I\’m from Colombia (South America), and I haven\’t been to Asia yet, so although a lot of concepts and character\’s personalities feel foreign, they also feel very close and similar. Most themes are highly universal. Snow Desert is one of my favorite parts of the book, I felt like it acts as a vessel for the rest. It holds all the \”loose threads\” together beautifully. Thank you thank you for writing and looking forward to reading you again

Not my cup of green tea ? nicely written but you me … went nowhere!

Came in excellent condition

This debut novel, a series of four connected stories, Islands, Faultline, Valley, and Snow Desert, was originally published in India in 2018, and takes the reader on a journey through South Asia and through time. 5 Stars Islands tells the story of a newly married couple, Giriji Prasad and Chanda Devi living on a tropical island, where silence is the relentless sound of water. The waves, like your own breaths, never leave you. For a fortnight now, the gurgle and thunder of clouds has drowned out the waves. Rains drum on the roof and skid over the edge, losing themselves in splashes. Simmer, whip, thrum, and slip. The sun is dead they tell you.’ As newlyweds, they are but ’strangers in a bedroom damp with desire and flooded with incipient dreams. And Girija Prasad dreams furiously these days. For the rains are conducive to fantasies, an unscientific truth.’ For me, this was the most engaging of these stories, but I enjoyed them all, even though their appeal varied. I loved the setting of this somewhat isolated Andaman Islands under the British Empire, and Chanda’s character, she communes with the trees, with as well as with spirits, whereas Girja is more technical and scientific, having received an Oxford education. 4 Stars Faultline follows the life of Girija’ and Chanda’s maid, Mary, as well as her son, who goes by Plato rather than his given name. Plato is in a Burmese prison, a political prisoner. ’He crawls to a corner and sits with his back against the damp wall, weeping with drops of humidity…Current, that’s all he is. Passing through different bodies and lives.’ 3 Stars Valley follows Thapa, a friend of Mary’s son, who is from Nepal, and who meets a very young dancer at a bar in Kathmandu. He is closer to sixty, and she is ’…young enough to be his granddaughter.’ ’What the rest of the world consumes as breath is, in this land, a musical instrument. The mountains use the air to hum, drum, howl, and sing. They use the air to connect your soul to their own. For once you have breathed in the mountain air, there is no turning back. No matter where you live out your story, the outcome will have been decided by the mountains.’ 3 Stars Snow Desert, is set in the Karakoram Mountains, in a remote village, and follows the story of Apo, the ’Grandfather of the entire village, a man who ’feels that…the past is real and the present is a half-baked memory Sometimes, the past is an incomprehensible beast and the future its unrealized shadow. He spends his time trying to preserve, share the myths, legends. While these stories, particularly the last two, seemed to echo, repeat similar themes, a dose of magical realism, and the lovely writing throughout made this more than a worthwhile read for me. Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House Publishing Group – Random House / One World

I’ve read a lot of great novels lately but this one was very special. The novel takes place in Asia mostly in India but Burma, the Andaman Islands which is now part of India and Nepal. The characters are interconnected and the time period begins in the 40s to the 80s. All characters are missing something, love, life, a child, a body part, a parent. Ultimately a feeling of belonging. The novel starts post WWII. in the Andaman Islands. Used as a penal colony by the British Empire, the islands will be given to India upon liberation. A couple from India settle in the most valued residence at the top of the highest mountain. They take a Karen woman from the community as a maid and allow her child to live with them. The child is taken by a pastor to Burma where the boy’s Burmese father was from. She is ostracized by her own people for marrying a Burmese. We learn about the Indian couple’s life and then move on with Mary the Karen woman when she finds her grown son had been imprisoned by the military junta. Her attempt to free him becomes the second story. Later we find the son as a much older man in Nepal, free from Burmese and Indian prisons but terribly damaged. The last character is a TIbetan man trying to survive as after fleeing the the Chinese invasion at the foot of the Himalayas in Nepal. All these stories are moving and eloquent. The stories of life and death as outsiders tell pognaint truths about migrants and people who have to move to make a life.

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