Storizen – July 2019

COVER STORY

JULY 2019 STORIZEN MAGAZINE | 13

mperil her daughter, her marriage,

and, eventually, Niki herself. When a

blizzard blankets NYC, Niki finds

herself on a path where the present

and past collide violently.Interweaving

the epic Mahabharata, the poetry of

Bulleh Shah, and the legend of Heer,

The Radiance of a Thousand Sunsis

a novel about the mythic and the

intimate, about stories on tapestry and

mobs that recur, about home and love

and history and those heartbreaking

moments when they all come

crashing together.

The narrative spans the cataclysms of

Partition and 9/11, via the brutality of

Emergency and the pogrom of 1984,

and stretches from India to New York.

Admittedly, it is a broad canvas, one

that I have wrestled with for many

many years. To echo that famous

dialogue from the film Damini: draft

pe

draft, draft pe draft, draft pe draft

likhti gayi, par manuscript nahin

mila. Until it finally did. Phew! But

it would not have been possible

without the countless books,

academic articles, scholarly

research papers and oral

testimonies which provided me

with a solid foundation upon which

to build my novel. Historical fiction

is a tricky beast and I am

pernickety about historical

authenticity, hence the two-step-

forward-one-step-backward

momentum of writing this book. I

am indebted to the public library

network in Hong Kong and New

York — HKPL and NYPL — for

daily sustenance.

The Radiance of a Thousand Sunsis a novel about the

mythic and the intimate, about stories on tapestry and

mobs that recur, about home and love and history

and those heartbreaking moments when they all come

crashing together.