** The phenomenal Indian bestseller ** **Winner of the Tata Lit Live Best First Book of the
Year Award ** 'Intense lyrical and powerful. This is a remarkable debut' Jeet Thayil author
of Narcopolis and The Book of Chocolate Saints 'Latitudes of Longing is a book to be savoured'
The Hindu 'Bold and imaginative' India Today A prizewinning literary epic of the subcontinent
for readers of Yaa Gyasi's HOMEGOING and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's HALF OF A YELLOW SUN In the
feverish tropics of the Andaman Islands a young botanist tends to a fragile rose he has
imported to welcome his bride. Hoping their marriage will bloom in this strange life hundreds
of miles from the east coast of India he is entranced by Chanda Devi's fierce nature and
unusual gifts speaking to trees and the ghosts of former colonialists. These islands she
tells her adoring husband rest on a faultline cracked so deep into the earth that spirits
cross the boundary freely. But it is not this fracture that takes a tragic bite out of their
happiness. With the family riven by heartbreak their maid takes the chance to resolve her own
past mistakes. Having abandoned her son many years before she now traces him to Myanmar only
to find him in prison - the enemy of a brutal regime. The faultline she followed over the
Indian Ocean now cuts north into Nepal where the prisoner's ally an itinerant drug dealer
tries to rescue a young woman from the dancing bars of Kathmandu. It shadows his footsteps into
the Karakoram mountains where a scientist looks deep into the abyss between India and
Pakistan. It rises all the way to the snow deserts beyond the reach of nation or war where an
elder of the village waits for the return of his true love bringing all their journeys full
circle. A breathtaking epic Latitudes of Longing possesses the reader with a blazing sense of
wonder. Shubhangi Swarup's vision goes deeper than the human stories of the subcontinent to
reveal the conscious history of the earth itself. Tender in every detail touched with humour
and profound humanity this is a novel brimming with life an original masterpiece.
