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A sweeping, lyrical debut about the love and longing between humanity and the earth itself, by a major new literary talent from India 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 each other, and our mysterious and sacred relationship with nature.
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0"All of us are burdened by the twin destinies of saying goodbye to our loved ones and departing from our loved ourselves... Let this not obliterate the greater destiny we all share—the fleeting moments we have together."
Latitudes of Longing is unexpectedly a humbling reading experience. Within its pages, it ventures to map out the natural world, connecting events from millions of years ago to contemporary times. The four interconnected stories triumph in imparting feelings of awe, longing, and hope in the act of resignation to the bigger and older world that encapsulates all of us and a world that is abundant of possibilities which makes such stories come to life.
The landscapes of the Indian subcontinent, Burma, and the Tibetan plateau adds another layer of magic to the already whimsical prose of Shubhangi Swarup. Swarup's prose encompasses a beautiful world, different yet the very same world we are living in—a world that had been and is continuously being taken for granted. In a way, this book is a subtle distress call to save the world from its rapid devastation and Swarup is tender in her efforts to reveal the state of nature by telling the readers of its wonder and magnificence that we would someday be longing for if we fail to protect and preserve the planet which makes our life and living possible.
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