Everything the Light Touches

Pariat (The Nine-Chambered Heart) weaves the stories of two women’s travels in India with a narrative involving German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in her lush and layered latest. Shai returns from contemporary Delhi to her hometown in India’s mountainous Meghalaya region. There, she’s stunned to learn Oiñ, her childhood nanny, is gravely ill, and she strikes out for the remote village of Mawmalang to check in on her. In a parallel narrative set in the early 1900s, Cambridge University graduate student Evelyn travels to Calcutta under the guise of searching for a suitor while surreptitiously visiting botanical gardens and wandering the forests of northeastern India. Evelyn eventually connects with a young would-be suitor, but she’s more interested in her search for a rare plant, which leads her to take a solo hike deep in the forest. Goethe, who was also a botanist, comes into play while making a 1780s sojourn to Italy as part of a natural philosophy project, where he develops the ideas that will prove deeply influential to Evelyn. Shai, meanwhile, discovers her green thumb while visiting with Oiñ’s family. There’s an abundance of lush details of northeastern India, and the smooth synthesis of ideas and narrative keeps everything together. This is a feast. Agent: Maria Cardona, Pontas Literary & Film. (Oct.)