Latitudes of Longing

Informationen zum Autor Shubhangi Swarup Klappentext "A spellbinding work of literature, Latitudes of Longing follows the interconnected lives of characters searching for true intimacy. The novel sweeps across India, from an island, to a valley, a city, and a snow desert, to tell a love story of epic proportions. We follow a scientist who studies trees and a clairvoyant who speaks to them; a geologist working to end futile wars over a glacier; octogenarian lovers; a mother struggling to free her revolutionary son; a yeti who seeks human companionship; a turtle who transforms first into a boat and then a woman; and the ghost of an evaporated ocean as restless as the continents. Richly imaginative and wryly perceptive, Latitudes of Longing offers a soaring view of humanity: our beauty and ugliess, our capacity to harm and love one another, and our mysterious and sacred relationship with nature."--Back cover.

Autorentext

Shubhangi Swarup

Klappentext

"A spellbinding work of literature, Latitudes of Longing follows the interconnected lives of characters searching for true intimacy. The novel sweeps across India, from an island, to a valley, a city, and a snow desert, to tell a love story of epic proportions. We follow a scientist who studies trees and a clairvoyant who speaks to them; a geologist working to end futile wars over a glacier; octogenarian lovers; a mother struggling to free her revolutionary son; a yeti who seeks human companionship; a turtle who transforms first into a boat and then a woman; and the ghost of an evaporated ocean as restless as the continents. Richly imaginative and wryly perceptive, Latitudes of Longing offers a soaring view of humanity: our beauty and ugliess, our capacity to harm and love one another, and our mysterious and sacred relationship with nature."--Back cover.

Zusammenfassung
A reminder that the earth itself is alive, and that even in our isolation we are members of a changing world . . . In the timescale of this novel, bedrock moves, lighthouses unmoor, and you can feel the ground wander. Guernica

Experimental, sweeping, epic. Goop, a Goop Book Club Pick

Astonishing and completely original, Shubhangi Swarup s magical novel will change the way you see people and landscapes, forests, the oceans, snow deserts. Nilanjana S. Roy

Incandescent! What a treasure. Thank you for this gem. It should be galloping across the galaxies. Or maybe not so that those of us who have run into it can keep the experience as a cultish and delectable secret! Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, author of The Dragonfly Sea and Dust**

This daring novel, gloriously lyrical but excitingly precise, and steeped in the flora, fauna, history, and politics of that enthralling region between the Andaman Islands and the Tibetan plateau, gives us the sweep of human drama among astonishingly rich natural and geographical complexity. Breathtaking. Ruth Padel, author of Where the Serpent Lives and Tigers in Red Weather **

Lyrical, original, and heartbreaking. **JCB Literary Prize Jury

"Swarup debuts with an inventive novel in stories that features a multigenerational cast in search of love and worldly purpose. . . . By integrating magical elements talking glaciers and yetis appear Swarup eschews conventional love stories to focus instead on many forms of desire, while zigzagging across time and place. This offers beautiful depictions of humanity through a successfully experimental form." Publishers Weekly

A promising debut novel sweeps through a series of stories that join human lives to the natural world. . . . Made up of four linked novellas. Their titles Islands, Faultline, Valley, and Snow Desert suggest the book s emphasis on how people connect (or don t) to their planet. . . . The book vividly recounts their often humorous, sometimes surreal, and ultimately touching relationship. ***Kirkus Reviews

* The lush monsoon-soaked Andaman Islands. The snow deserts of Ladakh. The valley of Kathmandu. The jagged edge of Burma. Swarup s lyrical debut exalts in the majesty of the South Asian subcontinent by framing every one of her characters against these spectacular landscapes. . . . Generous doses of magical realism mixed in with regional folklore add to the atmospheric charm . . . These sumptuous and haunting narratives confirm a character s worst suspicion that reality is the worst story ever written. Fiction is infinitely better, especially when it offers true escape like this one. ** Booklist (starred review)**

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

Islands

Silence on a tropical island 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.

Seeded in the sounds is an elemental silence. The quietness of mist and the stillness of ice.

The newly married Girija Prasad and Chanda Devi have resigned to their fate 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.

One night, when the downpour suddenly stops, it wakes him up. His ears had adjusted to the tropical cacophony like a spouse to a snoring partner. Rising from a wet dream, he wonders what happened. Who left the room?

He peeps down from his queen-sized bed to Chanda Devi s rustic mattress on the floor, where she sleeps facing the open window instead of him. Aroused, he gazes at the curves of her silhouette in the darkness. When the two of them were united for several births by walking around the sacred fire seven times during their wedding ceremony, she followed his footsteps meekly, firm in her conviction that destiny had brought them together once again in a new avatar. Yet in this avatar, he would have to find a place in her heart once again. Until then, she informed him on the first night, I will make my bed on the ground.

She s wide awake, distraught because of the accusatory cries emanating from the other side. It is the ghost of a goat. The ghost escaped countless realms to come wander on their roof. And now its restless hooves have descended to stand under the open window, filling the room and her conscience with guilt.

Can you hear it? she asks. She can feel his eyes on her back.

Hear what?

The goat bleating outside.

His forlorn erection withers away. He s alert now to Chanda Devi and the predicament she poses.

There s no goat roaming in our house, he replies in exasperation.

She sits up. The bleating has grown louder, as if to tell her to convey to her dreamy husband, You took away my life, but you can t take away my afterlife, you sinful meat-eater!

It s just outside our window, she tells him.

Does it scare you?

No.

Are you threatened by this goat?

No.

Then perhaps you could ignore it and go back to sleep. He meant to say should and not could, but he doesn t have the courage to be stern. His wife, he has realized, doesn t respond well to dialectics or coercion. In fact, she doesn t respond well to most things. If only she were less attractive, he could have ignored her and gone back to sleep.

How can you sleep? she asks. You hacked the innocent creature, minced its flesh, deep-fried it with onions and garlic, then ate it. And you left its restless soul to haunt our house!

If the souls of all the various kinds of animals he had consumed returned to haunt him, his home would be a zoo and barn combined, leaving no space to move, let alone sleep. But mild-mannered Girija Prasad cannot say that. Two months into his marriage and he s re…