Light Across the Plains
Will be published approx. on 1. October 2026
Book
Hardback
978-1-915693-57-0 (ISBN)
Description
When Simran dies suddenly in Berlin in 1989, Lekha, adrift and unfulfilled, travels to settle her estranged aunt's affairs. Swept up in a city in flux, what begins as a brief, practical journey soon unfolds as an excavation of memory, longing, and forces that shape lives across time and place.In Berlin, Lekha uncovers Simran's life as a young immigrant in 1960s London, her decisions bound up in intense love and friendship amid shifting political landscapes of postwar Europe and beyond. Yet Simran's story remains incomplete, at least until Lekha's greataunt Prushna comes into view, her quiet audacity illuminating the hidden history of a family marked by Partition, exile, upheaval and displacement.Light Across the Plains spans decades and continents, tracing the bonds between different generations of a family as they push against the confines of the times they live in and learn to live with the choices they make.'
More details
Person
Sharon Duggal was born in Handsworth, Birmingham and now lives in Hove with her family. Her second novel, Should We Fall Behind (2020, Bluemoose Books) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's 2021 Encore Award, selected for Between the Covers, BBC television's flagship book show and chosen as a Prima Magazine Book of the Year. Her debut, The Handsworth Times was The Morning Star's Fiction Book of the Year 2016 and selected as the Brighton City Reads Big Read in 2017. Her short fiction appears in anthologies including The Book of Birmingham, Visual Verse, and Love Bites: Fiction Inspired by Pete Shelley and Buzzcocks. Light Across the Plains is Sharon's third novel.