FROM THE ELLIOT BAY BOOK COMPANY, SEATTLE, A STORY

From Courtney Shannon Strand, former About.com Guide

“The story of how I came to find and read Anuradha Roy’s beautiful novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, is not as long as the distance I went to find it. In Delhi en route to a literature festival in Jaipur this past January, I stumbled totally by chance into a reception honoring British publisher Christopher MacLehose. His hosts, Rukun Advani and Anuradha Roy, run a terrific independent academic press, Permanent Black. Talking about the role of academic publishers in India, then how a clearly significant press composed of two people, doing everything, managed to function: that was my introduction to Anuradha Roy.

I shortly learned— not terribly directly —that she had written a novel, one published in India and numerous other countries. Notes were made, and when I was in Faqir Chand and Sons’ legendary bookshop the next day, a Picador India edition of An Atlas of Impossible Longing was miraculously (to my eye) produced from the shelves of the most unfathomably organized bookshop I think I’ve ever seen.

An Atlas of Impossible Longing itself was more than fathomable even though it carries considerable mystery at its heart. Set over a span of years in early 20th-century Bengal, it tells of people brought together and then wrenched apart by circumstances historical, cultural and natural, all at once. Betrayals, secrets, chance, human greed and machination all play a big part, but a deep-set current of longing, keeping some indescribable purpose, ineffable and alive over time, no matter what waylaying occurs, makes it a particularly memorable, resonant book. It’s one of those rare books where time, rhythm, breathing change as one reads. You truly enter the book, the book inhabits you. It’s also one of the most assured novels I’ve read in some time, never mind that it’s a debut. Every character, every setting, shift of scene, situation—rings true.

Upon return to the US after India, I found myself in that nowhere-land of having this amazing, transporting book to recommend, but no easy way to put it in others’ hands. Elliott Bay imported several from the UK, selling them briskly. Everyone who got it came back, saying how wonderful it was, wanting to buy additional copies to give to others. Getting ready to place reorders overseas, we received the welcome news that Free Press would be publishing An Atlas of Impossible Longing in spring 2011.”—Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA

READ THE ARTICLE IN ITS ORIGINAL SITE HERE.

A Tagore in Nainital

Sudakshina, from Chitra Deb's 'Thakurbarir Andarmahal' Earlier this month, I went to Abbotsford , a historic estate in Nainital, for the Himalayan Echoes literary festival, run by Janhavi Prasada. The festival took place on the extensive lawns of the estate, which is now run as an elegant hotel, but originally it was a family home and the place had been acquired from its British owners by Janhavi’s great grandfather Jwala Prasada and his wife, Purnima Devi, in the late 19 th century. Janhavi’s new book, Nainital Through Stories, Memories, History mentions this in its first few pages: From Nainital Through Stories I was intrigued to learn that Purnima Devi was a niece of Rabindranath Tagore. She was born (according to Wikipedia) on 13 May 1884, at No. 6, Dwarkanath Tagore's Lane, Jorasanko, Calcutta, to Hemendranath Tagore (1844–1884) of Jorasanko. Hemendranath was the older brother of Rabindranath Tagore, and son of Debendranath Tagore, founder o...

Mauritius Diary

Photograph by Anuradha Roy Is This Us? A bus with ‘La Perle de la Savanne’ painted down its back and sides trundles down the road and we crawl in its wake. Behind us, many others as patient. There’s no honking nor any attempts to overtake the bus. This wouldn’t be so mystifying if about 63 per cent of the population in Mauritius were not Indian-origin. Where’s their Indianness gone? Why isn’t anyone shooting jets of scarlet spittle or peeing into roadside walls? I travel across the island, see no garbage heaps. And oh—nobody’s groping women. I feel safe enough to take taxis alone across the country, safe enough to sail to another island on a motorboat where the only other passengers are the Creole boatman and his buddy. Jade, celadon, sapphire and turquoise melt and mingle in the sea under a sky as blue as a kingfisher’s wing. We make our crossing. The water’s clear enough to see fish flitting past corals. No hint of floating rubbish. No Sweet Deal Indian-origin...

Begum Anees Khan

Once a week around midday, Maulvi Sah’b would come in through the gates of our school in Hyderabad and class would divide briskly into two and troop off to different parts of the building. Those who were Muslim would be at religious instruction classes with him for the next half hour while the others trudged through moral science lessons. Something similar happened during language classes. We would hear a singsong chorus of “A-salaam-aleikum, Aunty”, from the Urdu classroom as we sat at our Sanskrit or Telugu lessons. Through my nomadic childhood, I’ve been at many schools. None exemplified the idea of secular India as intensely as this Muslim school in Hyderabad. Begum Anees Khan, who made it so, died in Hyderabad on August 16. Her passing feels symbolic, as if it signifies the death of a quixotic idea. Anees Khan was not given to seeking the limelight or making speeches. She never spelled out her secularism. It was instinctive: instead of words, there was act...

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