WINNER OF THE AUTHER AWARD FOR BEST FICTION, THE SUSHILA DEVI AWARD, AND THE ATTA GALATTA BANGALORE LITERATURE FESTIVAL BOOK PRIZE 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE JCB PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE TATA LITERATURE AWARD AND THE VOW FICTION AWARD
BEST BOOKS OF 2022 — THE NEW YORKER
In this bold, brilliant work, journeys across continents and centuries carefully intertwine in a multi-layered saga that unfolds through the adventures and life choices of four unique characters. Shai, lost and drifting, visits her hometown in India’s Northeast which offers the possibility of new ways of being that could renew and realign her. Evelyn, a Cambridge student in the early 1900s, underestimated by her peers but eager to learn, is guided on a "scientific" quest to the forests of the lower Himalayas. Johann, a German whose creativity will cement his place in history for centuries to come, travels through Italy developing his ideas for a ground-breaking text that draws on botany, philosophy, poetry. And a young Swede, Karl, whose unwavering curiosity for earth’s natural marvels takes him on an expedition that alters the way we will understand the world around us forever.
A marvel of contrast and comparison, an epic exploration of our ways of seeing, 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 like none other. Janice Pariat brings vividly to life a conception of plants as beings endowed with a powerful inner vitality."
Amitav Ghosh
Author of Gun Island
"Written by a novelist with the eye of a poet, and a poet with the narrative powers of a novelist—a novel that needed to be written, that tells true things, is entirely its own being."
Robert Macfarlane
Author of Underland: A Deep Time Journey
"Janice Pariat finds a new language of connection, wonder, and loss, for the songs of the earth from Lapland and Goethe's Europe to the Lower Himalayas and remote villages in India's Northeast, her stories dancing between centuries in this generous and intricate work."
Nilanjana Roy
Author of Black River
"Everything the Light Touches weaves the timelessness of nature and the urgency of human emotions into an elegiac tale that is evocative, intelligent and deeply thought-provoking. A seminal work by a novelist and a poet at the height of her powers."
Pranay Lal
Author of Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent
"Everything the Light Touches is gorgeous, warm, tender, precise, full of charm and humour, but also hugely ambitious and lit by wonderful flashes of gorgeous prose. It announces the arrival of a major new talent in Indian fiction."
William Dalrymple
Author of The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World
"Written with a curiosity that jumps across geographies, time, discourses and disciplines, Everything the Light Touches is a gift to those who question the forms and preoccupations of the modern novel."
Shubhangi Swarup
Author of Latitudes of Longing
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