Helium
Published on 7. November 2013
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-4088-2916-5 (ISBN)
Description
On 1 November 1984, a day after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination, a nineteen-year-old student, Raj, travels back from a class trip with his mentor, Professor Singh. As the group disembark at Delhi station a mob surrounds the professor, throws a tyre over him, douses him in petrol and sets him alight.
Years later, after moving to the United States, Raj finds himself compelled to return to India to find his professor's widow, the beautiful and enigmatic Nelly. As the two walk through the misty mountains of Shimla, painful memories emerge, and Raj realises he must face the truth about his father's role in the genocidal pogrom. But, as they soon discover, the path leads inexorably back to that day at the train station.
In this lyrical and haunting exploration of one of the most shocking moments in the history of the Indian nation, Jaspreet Singh has crafted an affecting and important story of memory, collective silences and personal trauma.
Years later, after moving to the United States, Raj finds himself compelled to return to India to find his professor's widow, the beautiful and enigmatic Nelly. As the two walk through the misty mountains of Shimla, painful memories emerge, and Raj realises he must face the truth about his father's role in the genocidal pogrom. But, as they soon discover, the path leads inexorably back to that day at the train station.
In this lyrical and haunting exploration of one of the most shocking moments in the history of the Indian nation, Jaspreet Singh has crafted an affecting and important story of memory, collective silences and personal trauma.
Reviews / Votes
A compelling insight into the cruel and complex world of India's recent internecine struggles -- Michael Palin * <i><b>Observer</i> Books of the Year</b> * Inventive, melancholy, and unflinchingly courageous * <b>Siddhartha Deb</b> * This is a beautifully written exploration of fathers and sons, illustrated a la W.G. Sebald with disquieting black-and-white photographs. Terrific -- Kate Saunders * <i><b>The Times</i></b> * Singh effortlessly folds into the novel's structure elements of chemistry and literature, including, to great effect, insights into Primo Levi's groundbreaking autobiography, The Periodic Table ... a tender and beautifully modulated book that manages to combine individual mourning and guilt, memory and forgetting, with a sweeping and utterly gripping panorama of modern Indian history and politics * <b><i>New Internationalist</b></i> * This ambitious, intense second novel is ... bold and courageous ... [A] disturbing, heartfelt work * <i><b>Irish Times</b></i> * Bold, moving ... A compelling character study and a powerful meditation on historic forgetting -- David Evans * <i><b>Financial Times</i></b> * The theme of "flow" governs both the novel's content and its fluid, mellifluous style, winding and weaving like the river Ganges through characters' stream-of-consciousness memories. The influence of Primo Levi and WG Sebald is strong in this richly intertextual novel exploring genocidal violence and the effects of the political on the personal. Singh's background as a scientist is apparent in the beautifully deployed scientific imagery: the past is like "drops of helium" that "refuse to disappear" -- Anita Sethi * <i><b>Observer</i></b> * Intensely political, at times it barely feels like fiction at all, bursting the bounds of genre to pursue an agenda of justice and retribution for the massacre of the Sikhs in 1984 * <b>Jane Housham, <i>Guardian</b></i> *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
Weight
437 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4088-2916-5 (9781408829165)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Born in India, Jaspreet Singh moved to Canada in 1990. He is a novelist, essayist, short story writer and a former research scientist. He received his doctorate in chemical engineering in 1998 from McGill University, Montreal, and two years later decided to focus full time on writing. Seventeen Tomatoes, his debut story collection, won the 2004 Quebec First Book Prize. Chef, his first novel, about the damaged landscapes of Kashmir, was a 2010 Observer Book of the Year and won the Canadian Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction. He has also been a finalist for four awards including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book. His work was longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Punjabi and Farsi. He lives in Toronto.
www.jaspreetsinghauthor.com
www.jaspreetsinghauthor.com