Latitudes of Longing
A Novel
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4.8 • 6 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A sweeping, lyrical debut about the love and longing between humanity and the earth itself, by a major new literary talent from India
“A marvel of magical realism.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
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. Binding them all together is a vision of life as vast as the universe itself.
A young writer awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in India for this novel, Shubhangi Swarup is a storyteller of extraordinary talent and insight. Richly imaginative and wryly perceptive, Latitudes of Longing offers a soaring view of humanity: our beauty and ugliness, our capacity to harm and love one another, and our mysterious and sacred relationship with nature.
Longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature • Shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature • Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award • Winner of the Sushila Devi Literature Award for the Best Book of Fiction Written by a Woman • Winner of the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award for Fiction
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Swarup debuts with an inventive novel in stories that features a multigenerational cast in search of love and worldly purpose. In the opening story, "Islands," it's 1948 and Girija Varma, India's first head of the National Forestry Service, lives on the Andaman Islands with his clairvoyant wife, Chanda Devi, who speaks with the local ghosts as she and Girija start a family and take in a young woman, Mary, to act as nanny. "Faultline" sees Mary's return to the mainland years later after learning that her long-abandoned son, Plato, has been imprisoned. Plato's drug-smuggling friend Thapa leads the third story, "Valley," and takes to a young woman, Bebo, who works at a dance club in early '90s Burma. Swarup concludes with "Snow Desert," in which a village elder falls in love with an outsider and assists a scientist in understanding the nature of earthquakes. By integrating magical elements talking glaciers and yetis appear Swarup eschews conventional love stories to focus instead on many forms of desire, while the zigzagging across time and place. This offers beautiful depictions of humanity through a successfully experimental form.
