I did not understand this book.

There are certain books I call "Oscar" books - books that are beautifully written but it's unclear what the reader is supposed to get from it - this was one of these books. The writing was lovely, but I picked up the book multiple nights in a row and couldn't for the life of me remember what I had read the night before.

I probably wouldn't have finished this book, but once I crossed 50%, I was going to finish it.

this book has the game of thrones effect, although to a much lesser extent

though all the stories are good they are overshadowed and eclipsed by Islands, astonishing beautiful and precious

Loved this book! Unexpectedly mystical and yet thoughtfully grounded in the natural world.

DNF after multiple attempts. Beautiful prose and a talented author,however the descriptions, metaphors, etc. we’re overwhelming and distracted from the stories. The stories were then not very interesting and I forced myself to read. Would like to try another title from this author though.

Beautiful poetic language.

From the very first sentence I was captured by the beauty of this book “Silence on a tropical island is the relentless sound of water. The waves, like the sound of your own breathing, never leave you”. And just like that, so subtly, without my even realising, I was taken on a journey exploring so much more. I went from reading beautifully composed descriptions of an island I’ve been longing to visit, to reading about life, longing, death and everything between and beyond. Throughout the book the author delivers profound messages that are delivered with the utmost nonchalance and detachment which made it so much more powerful. “For most of those who perished, the final image they carried was of a summer sky, an indifferent eyewitness. As indifferent to the movement of continents as it was to the sight of a fisherman’s corpse floating in the water, surrounded by butterflies.” What I really loved was how the book explored science, both, of those educated by textbooks and those educated by the planet itself. “Nature doesn’t adhere to the laws of science in the way scientists do.”

Some of my favourite quotes:

“The cracked few, not the meek, shall inherit the earth. It is faultlines, not rigid continents, guiding poles or mighty oceans that hold it all together.”

“The universe may have come to life with a bang, but the possibilities were conceived in silence.”

“That is art’s biggest tragedy. We can imagine god, god’s enemies, ideologies to fight over, but we can’t tell a single story of which we are not the centre. That is the root of all the world’s problems, my friend. But you cannot put yourself in someone else’s shoes until you remove your own.”

“The best stories are the ones that are still to come, Ghazala. Close enough to hear, smell and admire. Yet out of reach.”

DNF. The writing just didn't sit well with me, and I was confused the whole time.

The flutter of a butterfly’s wings on one end of the world creates a tornado on the other. An earthquake generates a tsunami, and in an instant, “the islands tilted by a few meters, drowning forests and farms.” As tectonic plates along fault lines settle, shockwaves ripple through space and time, leaving their mark on every generation. Similarly, the characters in Latitudes of Longing begin where others end, their paths intertwining through history, eventually coming full circle back to the beginning.
Colonial India has just gained independence, and botanist Girija Prasad, a Western-educated scholar, returns to his homeland to enter into an arranged marriage with Chanda Devi, a learned woman who speaks to spirits and trees. Two seemingly different worlds, yet so alike. Both are outcasts in their way—Girija, a Hindu who eats meat, and Chanda, a woman deemed too educated. Science and superstition, contradictions united by love. Yearning for his wife, who sleeps separately from him as Girija counts his failed erections, he quits eating meat to please her, only to discover that Chanda has her reasons for avoiding him and staying out of his bed. Alongside them are Mary Rose, their servant, and later, Devi, their daughter, who takes her mother’s place. Devi is just as unusual as her parents—how could she be otherwise? Spirits also inhabit their home, lingering echoes of those who have lived there across centuries.
Decades later, Burma became a powder keg on the verge of explosion. Revolutionaries battle against the military junta that ruthlessly crushes all dissent, regardless of faith or ethnicity. Among them is Plato, an orphan who never knew his parents. Raised by his grandparents, he was told his father died before his birth, and his mother left him to start a new life with another man. As he fights the junta, Plato longs to meet his mother, unaware that his parents’ story is one of poverty, hunger, an alcoholic father, and a blow to the stomach—a knife in his mother’s hand and blood in the aftermath.
Thapa is an aging smuggler, a man who feels like a stranger in his land. His is the life of a lonely soul, longing for family and closeness after all these years. Once, he contemplated suicide but couldn’t decide on the method. One rainy night, a girl knocks on his door—a nightclub dancer from a bar he frequents. She demands a story from him, or she’ll take her own life.
On the slopes of the Himalayas, in a region claimed by three nations, where the bodies of soldiers from all three lie frozen beneath the ice, Apo is the grandfather of an entire village. A widower, he spends his days sitting in a chair surrounded by memories. He doesn’t remember the names of his parents or how many siblings he had, but he remembers the war—the tanks, explosions, and death. He yearns for forgetfulness and for death, which eludes him until Ghazala, a Muslim widow, arrives in the village, rekindling love in his old heart.
We meet Rana, a young scientist studying glaciers, who encounters the ghost of his grandfather. A lonely Yeti roams the snow desert, hiding from humans. A turtle’s bones grow into a tree that becomes a boat, which sails the ocean in search of its child. The moon lays eggs from which stars are born. Ghosts of colonizers and soldiers linger; above all, there is Earth, the central character in all these stories. Watching silently from the sidelines, its jungles, islands, oceans, and mountains witness everything—the mingling scents, sounds, and landscapes.
Through her poetic prose, Shubhangi Swarup takes us through four interconnected stories, tied together by themes and characters who leap from one tale to another. Traveling through space and time across fault lines, the narratives span from the Andaman Islands to Myanmar, Nepal, and the Himalayas. The latitudes of longing divide and unite them all.
While the first story is the strongest and each subsequent one slightly weaker, Swarup leads us into a magical world between waking and dreaming, the natural and the supernatural. This novel is magical in every sense—crafted with love and layered with depth, each sentence and metaphor peeling back another layer of meaning. It’s one of those books where the journey matters more than the destination. The lack of a concrete plot and fragmented narrative, with occasional unclear jumps through time and places, may deter some readers. However, if you enjoy authors like Michael Ondaatje, Gabriel García Márquez, or Salman Rushdie, Latitudes of Longing is a book for you.