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They Whisper in my Blood is a moving love story, a sweeping tale, a panorama of a Portuguese-Indian family’s history told through a poignant refrain that is this clan’s nemesis. It screams across time and continents. There’s murder, girl-child trafficking, a torrid mixed-race affair and homophobia, all of which beget intrigue, sensuousness, heartache . . . but always hope. The characters – visceral, impassioned and deeply flawed – stay with you long after the last page is turned.
The Portuguese were the first European colonizers of India and ruled Portuguese India – Portuguese Estado da Índia – for four and a half centuries. Their legacy endures even today in the lives of their descendants, one of whom is differential, intelligent, beautiful Perpetua – Pippa – Cabral, the heartsick protagonist in this novel.
Fans of authors like Arundhati Roy, Delia Owens and Richard Powers will love this multi-generational story. Nature’s spontaneous beauty is reverenced in sentences that weave lush imagery, so evocative one can almost smell the spice; sentences that resound with stunning prose crafted seemingly by a poet. Sculpted with as bold a hand, is the plot which delivers one hell of a punch.
- Medium
- Ebook
- Genres
- Romance, Historical Fiction, Fiction and Literature
- Angeboten von
- BAPS (Autor)
- Lieferung
- August 2022 Startet: 2022-08-01Abgeschlossen: 2022-08-25
- Im Verkauf
- 2022-07-30
- Länder
- In allen Ländern verfügbar
- Links
- Informationen zum Buch
LibraryThing Werk-Seite - Erhalt
- 3 hat rezensiert
To my dear readers,
This novel is my debut into the world of fiction, after having achieved undreamt-of success in the world of non-fiction with my publishers Hachette of the UK.
The move has been influenced by an artistic impulse that has lain dormant in the years bookended by ‘life’ – the same life that has metabolized in a dark place and from which I have drawn on, now that it has ripened. It’s time for that exilic ideator, that person who has hitherto stood outside of, looking in, constantly cross-examining and pondering the questionable societal norms that exist, to come into her own, I decided. As a child and a teenager right up until my (teenage!) marriage I wrote and got some recognition – I have a letter from the President of India that says: ‘I hope you grow useful to the country’, which speaks to my fresh-faced, exuberant prolificity . . .
The time lag is what I draw on - the turning points, the high-noon's, the knife-edges, the quotidian - all of it experienced during my checkered life lived in three disparate countries: India, The UAE and now New Zealand; as well as my confusing (to me!) ethnicity (Portuguese, Italian, Indian, Kiwi). It is my intriguing ancestry that has urged me to write this novel. I remember snippets of conversations my parents used to have about someone who 'did not like sex'...
In returning to writing I have found my native language, one that has afforded me an ‘in’ to be in. Art, of which writing is one, is not a torch, it is said, directed at the root of things, but a subtle mist where the unseeable is revealed. This, my most Eastern of attributes, has helped me find my home.
