Janice Pariat

One of the most acclaimed and revered writers of her generation returns with her most ambitious novel yet—an elegant, multi-layered work, rich in imagination and exquisitely told, that interweaves a quartet of journeys across continents and centuries.

As emotionally resonant as Kiran Desai’s "The Inheritance of Loss," as inspired as Anthony Doerr’s "Cloud Cuckoo Land," as inventive as Louisa Hall’s "Speak," and as visionary as David Mitchell’s "Cloud Atlas," "Everything the Light Touches" is Janice Pariat’s magnificent epic of travelers, of discovery, of time, of science, of human connection, and of the impermanent nature of the universe and life itself—a bold and brilliant saga that unfolds through the adventures and experiences of four intriguing characters.

Shai is a young woman in modern India. Lost and drifting, she travels to her country’s Northeast and rediscovers, through her encounters with indigenous communities, ways of being that realign and renew her.

Evelyn is a student of science in Edwardian England. Inspired by Goethe’s botanical writings, she leaves Cambridge on a quest to wander the sacred forests of the Lower Himalayas.

Linnaeus, a botanist and taxonomist who famously declared “God creates; Linnaeus organizes,” sets off on an expedition to an unfamiliar world, the far reaches of Lapland in 1732. 

Goethe is a philosopher, writer, and one of the greatest minds of his age. While traveling through Italy in the 1780s, he formulates his ideas for "The Metamorphosis of Plants," a little-known, revelatory text that challenges humankind’s propensity to reduce plants—and the world—into immutable parts.

Drawn richly from scientific and botanical ideas, "Everything the Light Touches" is a swirl of ever-expanding themes: the contrasts between modern India and its colonial past, urban and rural life, capitalism and centuries-old traditions of generosity and gratitude, script and "song and stone." Pulsating at its center is the dichotomy between different ways of seeing, those that fix and categorize and those that free and unify. Pariat questions the imposition of fixity—of our obsession to place permanence on plants, people, stories, knowledge, land—where there is only movement, fluidity, and constant transformation. "To be still," says a character in the book, "is to be without life."

"Everything the Light Touches" brings together, with startling and playful novelty, people and places that seem, at first, removed from each other in time and place. Yet as it artfully reveals, all is resonance; all is connection.

A Novel

Everything the Light Touches

Boats on Land is a unique way of looking at India’s northeast and its people against a larger historical canvas—the early days of the British Raj, the World Wars, conversions to Christianity, and the missionaries.

This is a world in which the everyday is infused with folklore and a deep belief in the supernatural. Here, a girl dreams of being a firebird. An artist watches souls turn into trees. A man shape-shifts into a tiger. Another is bewitched by water fairies. Political struggles and social unrest interweave with fireside tales and age-old superstitions.

"Boats on Land" quietly captures our fragile and awkward place in the world.

A Collection of Short Stories

Boats on Land

The Nine Chambered Heart

A sweeping tale of love, nostalgia, and memory, moving through 1990s New Delhi and present-day London, "Seahorse" tracks one man's undying love for his former professor across time and place.

The seahorse is the only creature where the male is responsible for reproduction. Male seahorses bear their burdens, as does our protagonist Nem, a hero driven by his decades-long love for Nicholas, whom he met at a University in 1990s Delhi. Nem was not like his classmates, crowding around a TV set to watch music videos and talk about "doing it"; instead he opted for lonely walks around ruins. On one of these occasions he spied Nicholas, an enigmatic young professor from London, in the park with another male student.

With surprising ease, Nem seduces the much sought-after professor. It is in the wake of this brief but steamy affair, when Nicholas returns to London and Nem tries to continue with his life, that the story truly begins. Nem graduates from university and becomes a successful art critic, but his memories of Nicholas dominate his existence. After an invitation to speak at a conference in London, Nem's obsession with Nicholas returns. Still single, Nem wonders if this will be the opportunity to reconnect with his old and influential lover.

Instead, Nem is immediately swept up in London's cosmopolitan world, hobnobbing with the city's diverse artists and writers and enjoying the London club scene. Meanwhile, Nicholas artfully avoids any direct contact with Nem, instead orchestrating a series of clues that lead to Myra, a woman Nem had believed to be Nicholas's sister. Brought together by their love for Nicholas, Nem and Myra begin a friendship with surprising consequences. 

Employing skillful, immersive prose, Janice Pariat explores the notion of emotional memory with the inquisitive mind of a scientist and the prowess of a poet.

Seahorse

Mitra Phukan

Paro Anand

Manjula Padmanabhan

Bulbul Sharma

Uddipana Goswami

Pratyaksha

Venita Coelho.

Bulbul Sharma, Janice Pariat, Manjula Padmanabhan, Mitra Phukan, Paro Anand, Pratyaksha, Uddipana Goswami, Venita Coelho. Eight of India's best fiction writers come together to produce a book of intrigue and murders most foul.
In Mitra Phukan's story that opens this edge-of-the-seat anthology, She Stoops to Kill: Stories of Crime and Passion, a singing diva chokes to death onstage. The weapon is a poisoned paan--but who would want her dead? And Pratyaksha follows Mitra's entrée with the murder of an equally glamorous victim--air hostess Ginny Kalra. Bulbul Sharma, in 'Murder in the Wedding Season', creates a cosy setting for a wedding in Shimla; but the guests include a politician and a timorous widow whose past will disrupt the party in ways no one had imagined. And in Uddipana Goswami's 'Beloved of Flowers', a folktale about a girl reborn as a lotus leads young Dino to the truth behind a mysterious disappearance.
Manjula Padmanabhan's 'Serial Killer' brilliantly explores what it is like to be a perfectly normal person--except that you enjoy the act of murder. While Janice Pariat's delicately nuanced 'The Nurse' shows us another side of death altogether. In the penultimate story by Venita Coelho, Sister, a vigilante eunuch, helps the police solve a gruesome killing in a city slum. And Paro Anand brings the collection to a grand finale with a story that begins with lust and ends with a murder--or two--that may or may not have happened.
By turns chilling, horrific and morbidly fascinating, She Stoops to Kill: Stories of Crime and Passion, is a steaming witches' cauldron of stories that will keep you riveted, page after page.

Stories of Crime and Passion

She Stoops To Kill

In Everything the Light Touches we meet many travellers: Shai, a young Indian woman who journeys to India's northeast and rediscovers, through her encounters with indigenous communities, ways of living that realign and renew her. Evelyn, an Edwardian student at Cambridge who, inspired by Goethe's botanical writings, embarks on a journey seeking out the sacred forests of the Lower Himalayas. Linnaeus, botanist and taxonomist, who famously declared "God creates; Linnaeus organizes" and led an expedition to Lapland in 1732. And Goethe himself, who travelled through Italy in the 1780s, formulating his ideas for a revelatory text that called for a re-examination of our propensity to reduce plants - and the world - into immutable parts. Drawing richly from scientific ideas, the novel plunges into a whirl of ever-expanding themes, and the contrasts between modern India and its colonial past, urban life and the countryside, capitalism and centuries-old traditions of generosity and gratitude, script and "song and stone." At the heart of the book lies a tussle between different ways of seeing - those that fix and categorize, and those that free and unify. Everything the Light Touches brings together, with startling and playful novelty, people and places that seem, at first, removed from each other in time and place. Yet all is resonance, we discover; all is connection.

A Novel [WINNER OF THE TIMES OF INDIA JK PAPER AUTHER AWARD FOR FICTION 2023; LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 JCB PRIZE F

‘Superb. She had me at page one’ Chris Cleave, author of Everyone Brave is Forgiven ‘It’s the artful pleating of this subtle, psychologically astute novel that sets it apart’ DAILY MAIL The kaleidoscopic story of one woman as seen through the eyes of those she has loved or been loved by.

Janice Pariat

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