August 1, 2024
Dorabji won Simon & Schuster's Books Like Us grand prize for this novel, her debut. The family saga, set in the Himalayas between the late 1960s and 2022, tells the story of mother and daughter, generational secrets, sacrifice, and dreams against a backdrop of colonialization and militarization. Prepub Alert.
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November 1, 2024
Dorabji's expansive family chronicle takes place in a village called Poshkarbal in the foothills of the Himalayas over decades, from the 1970s to the near future of 2030. Over this time period, readers follow Aisha and witness her struggle with a tyrannical regime and the ensuing militant resistance. Aisha has learned herbal healing remedies from her strong-willed mother and aspires to higher education, but as a woman in an oppressive country, she is relegated to marriage, domesticity, and a life fraught with fear, brutality, and heartache. The novel can be unfocused and is populated with a plethora of characters that are hard to keep track of and are largely cardboard stereotypes with little depth. The prose is somewhat perfunctory and the dialogue stilted. But Dorabji is obviously fond of the mountain village and the part of the world she portrays, and she excels at lush descriptions of the verdant landscape. Ultimately, Dorabji invites readers to explore deep family love and the battle for liberation amid a ruthless militaristic reign.
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November 11, 2024
In Dorabji’s stirring debut, a Himalayan family is torn apart by war. It begins in 1974, when eight-year-old Aisha’s father, Babek, leaves their village to join a guerrilla force, hoping to free their land, a thinly veiled Kashmir, from an unidentified colonial regime (the real Kashmir is partitioned into Chinese, Indian, and Pakistani territories). Aisha’s mother, Noorjahan, a midwife who teaches her daughter about healing herbs and tinctures, also runs a clandestine opium business, growing a huge field of poppies in a meadow near their home. She intends to use the proceeds for Aisha’s education. When Aisha is 17, Noorjahan dies from the flu, and Aisha is married off to her teacher’s son, Alim, upending her plan to study at a university. By the 1990s, Aisha is a devoted mother to their two children, but after Alim learns she’s been raped by soldiers, his impotent shame and her humiliation over what happened cause a rift between them. Aisha also weathers the return of Babek after a 20-year absence; following a long and torturous imprisonment, he’s a shell of who he once was. There’s little narrative momentum, and the murky geopolitical details tend to frustrate, but Dorabji thoroughly explores the theme of resilience as the story extends to 2022, when Aisha makes a tincture to help ward off a mysterious pandemic. Book clubs will enjoy this character-driven drama.
December 15, 2024
The human costs of factionalism and occupation haunt a family through several generations in this debut novel. Inspired by the stories of people from the embattled region of Kashmir, Dorabji traces one family's struggles from the 1970s through the near future of 2030. Aisha first appears as a young, socially isolated child living in the small mountain village of Poshkarbal with her mother, Noorjahan, a midwife. They live alone, and Noorjahan instructs Aisha in some of her traditional practices, but the girl lives under a cloud of uncertainty and silence concerning the circumstances of a long-ago fire at the family's home and the whereabouts of her father, who has "left." Noorjahan insists that Aisha attend a local, government-run school, despite the child's great fears and the fact that few girls go to school. Over the years, Aisha develops into the star pupil of her class while also developing an awareness of the dangers presented to her by occupying forces--and the males within her own community. As members of Aisha's family grapple with the realities of life under occupation and Aisha herself advances from childhood into marriage, motherhood, and greater knowledge of her family's history, she is surrounded by points of decision: What is the value of education for women in a traditional society? In the face of increasing military activity, when is leaving your homeland the right decision? When is it best to abandon a long-held family enterprise in the covert cultivation of poppies? What right does one have to self-determination (or even happiness) amid terrible social and political upheaval? The true horrors of the region's occupation are revealed in graphic accounts of torture and sexual assault experienced by Aisha and her kin as they bear the unbearable. A compassionate account of endurance.
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