We are delighted to present Janice Pariat‘s new novel, The Nine-Chambered Heart, which will be published at the end of 2017 in hardcover by the prestigious imprint Fourth Estate in India, who won the highly contested auction for the rights.
Publisher Udayan Mitra said: «Many in India feel that Janice is one of the best writers in the English language with a subcontinent connect that we have today, and I most certainly share that view. Every new work by Janice is an absolute delight, and I was thrilled to find that The Nine-Chambered Heart lives up fully to the very high expectations I had. It is exquisite in its language, sharp in its observations, poetic, poignant and sometimes just disarmingly straightforward –and in terms of structure it is superbly innovative in a way that just perfectly reflects the mood of the narrative. It is without doubt one of the most lovely pieces of short fiction I have read in recent times.»
Janice Pariat is a young writer from North East India, winner of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award and winner of the Crossword Book Award. She has been praised highly by the press (‘revelatory and original’ according to Jeet Thayil) and has a book of short stories and a novel under her belt: Boats on Land, 2012; Seahorse, 2014, which was published by Random House in India and by Unnamed Press in North America. She has lived in London and Turin (Italy) but she is currently based in New Delhi (India).
Her new novel is a work of short-fiction about love, with exquisite language, sharp, poetic, poignant... and original in terms of structure. The Nine-Chambered Heart is short, beautiful, poignant, moving and unique, and breathes ‘truth’ in every sentence. A kaleidoscopic novel about love in all its forms, shapes and manifestations, in the small details and in the large decisions. A novel that floats between East and West – a bit like the author herself – offering snapshots of a woman’s life, at times ethereal and poetic and at times punch-in-the-stomach realistic. A female story on female feelings for a global audience. In short, a sentimental gem.
In the tradition of Jenny Offill, Helen Oyeyemi, Yoko Ogawa and reminiscent of a young Jhumpa Lahiri, but most of all, with Janice Pariat’s unique voice throughout.
After a heated four-way auction for English rights, The Nine-Chambered Heart will be published by Fourth Estate India (HarperCollins) in the Indian Sub-continent. At the moment, there's a lot of registered interest from publishers in the US, in the UK, Italy, France and Germany, among other territories.
For more information, please contact Marina Penalva.