Latitudes of Longing

My thanks to Quercus Books-riverrun for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Latitudes of Longing’ by Shubhangi Swarup in exchange for an honest review. It was originally published in India in 2018.

This is a stunning debut, an exquisitely written tale of multiple generations across various landscapes of the Indian subcontinent. It is presented in four sections: Islands, Faultline, Valley, and Snow Desert.

In it vivid descriptions of nature and the landscape are interwoven with history, politics, and meditations upon philosophy, religion and spirituality.

It opens in 1949 in the tropics of the Andaman Islands, as Giriji Prassd, a young botanist welcomes his bride, Chanda Devi. She is a free spirit, a mystic who speaks to trees and the ghosts of former colonialists. She also senses that the islands sit upon a fault line that allows spirits to cross the boundary between this world and the next. Yet their love is visited by tragedy.

The second section follows Mary, their Burmese maid, who decides to seek the son that she abandoned many years before. He has renamed himself Plato and is a political prisoner in Burma.

In the third section the focus moves to Nepal, following the story of Plato’s best friend, Thapa, a drug smuggler. In the final section Thapa travels to the snow deserts of the Karakoram mountains and the border between India and Pakistan. The snow deserts, exist beyond the reach of nation or war. Here, Rana, the geologist grandson of Chanda and Giriji, has come to conduct scientific experiments and to investigate reports that Apo, a village elder, has successfully predicted earthquakes for over sixty years.

I am quite comfortable with novels in which visions are accepted as normality, so Chanda’s reality and that of Apo, the village elder who shares tales of the fairies of the mountains and of the shy cheemo/yeti were welcome alongside its other themes of conflict, war, and crime.

‘Latitudes of Longing’ is a lyrical work of Indian literature and a bestseller in India and in 2018 was awarded the prestigious Tata Lit Live Best First Book of the Year.

Latitudes of Longing is nothing short of an exquisite tour de force and a sparkling debut full of originality and the pep and pizazz of natures bounty. This marks the start of a powerful and masterful new literary voice and one of the most beautiful and profound reads of the past few years for me. I went into this not knowing much more about it than the synopsis and some spoiler-free reviews and I recommend going in as blind as possible in order to gain maximum enjoyment; I think it’s really quite sufficient just to mention the glowing reviews it has received from both press and fellow authors as well as the fact that it's an award-winning novel. Spanning a vast swathe of the Indian subcontinent, we readers are invited into four very different but equally mesmerising interconnecting stories and it's testament to Swarup’s writing skill that she is both able to tell the stories from a personal level discussing the family implications before widening to explore the local surroundings, ecology and mother natures relationship with her earthly creations. As a character-driven tale, I was captivated and found every little aspect beguiling.

This is a complex, multilayered and extensively thought out collection of stories in which a multitude of vastly different characters make up the intriguing cast and is at times both hopeful and hopeless. It's thought-provoking and moving with some truly luscious and delightfully rich descriptions of nature and our planet and people. The lyrical prose was absolutely breathtaking and elevated the plot to whole new heights; it's difficult to convey the feeling of reading such beauty suffice to say that it effortlessly casts a spell over you and refuses to let you go. Shifting seamlessly between different epoch’s and locations we are treated to a vividly portrayed world and characters that leap off the pages and into your heart; so full of realism and credibility. I cannot recommend this stunning book highly enough. The way it explores the relationships between nature and humanity and our ceaseless ability to both hurt and heal the ones we love make for superb reading. A true and otherworldly masterpiece in which a rare majesty abounds. Many thanks to riverrun for an ARC.

A complex, fascinating and well written book that made me travel to unknown to me places and discover them.
It's a multigenerational saga that kept me hooked till the end and I loved the great style of writing, the amazing descriptions of the setting, and the well thought characters.
It's not easy to review a book like this because it's full for thought and it touched me at emotional level making me share the emotions of the characters.
I loved the style of writing and I think that the author is a talented storyteller.
I strongly recommend it.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

I received an e-ARC from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review

You ever come across a book that is so good that you can't help but keep reading, but it is that good that you try really hard to read it super slowly because you don't want it to end? This is one of those books.

It is beautifully written, the prose is absolutely stunning and the characters are complex and realistic. This is a multi-generational story that spans different times and places amongst the Indian subcontinent. From the humidity of the Andaman Islands to the glaciers of the Himalayas, Swarup describes all of these places so vividly and lyrically I was constantly blown away. I cannot decide whether I liked reading about the characters or the landscape more as both were done with such care and beauty.

If you're a very plot orientated reader you might find this slow, but if you are a character-driven reader that loves beautiful prose and literary fiction with some light fantasy/mythology sort of vibes you have got to check this book out! Coming out soon from Hachette Australia and Quercus in the UK.