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Description
On 1 November 1984, a day after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination, a nineteen-year-old student, Raj, travels back from a class trip with his mentor, Professor Singh. As the group disembark at Delhi station a mob surrounds the professor, throws a tyre over him, douses him in petrol and sets him alight.
Years later, after moving to the United States, Raj finds himself compelled to return to India to find his professor's widow, the beautiful and enigmatic Nelly. As the two walk through the misty mountains of Shimla, painful memories emerge, and Raj realises he must face the truth about his father's role in the genocidal pogrom. But, as they soon discover, the path leads inexorably back to that day at the train station.
In this lyrical and haunting exploration of one of the most shocking moments in the history of the Indian nation, Jaspreet Singh has crafted an affecting and important story of memory, collective silences and personal trauma.
Product details
| Published | 30 Oct 2013 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 9789382951728 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury India |
| Dimensions | 216 x 140 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd |
About the contributors
Reviews
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A compelling insight into the cruel and complex world of India's recent internecine struggles
Michael Palin, Observer Books of the Year
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Inventive, melancholy, and unflinchingly courageous
Siddhartha Deb
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This is a beautifully written exploration of fathers and sons, illustrated à la W.G. Sebald with disquieting black-and-white photographs. Terrific
Kate Saunders, The Times
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Singh effortlessly folds into the novel's structure elements of chemistry and literature, including, to great effect, insights into Primo Levi's groundbreaking autobiography, The Periodic Table ... a tender and beautifully modulated book that manages to combine individual mourning and guilt, memory and forgetting, with a sweeping and utterly gripping panorama of modern Indian history and politics
New Internationalist
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This ambitious, intense second novel is ... bold and courageous ... [A] disturbing, heartfelt work
Irish Times
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Bold, moving ... A compelling character study and a powerful meditation on historic forgetting
David Evans, Financial Times

























