Scan barcode
A review by hank_moody
Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup
5.0
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.
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.