Janice Pariat: Everything the Light Touches

Indian writer Janice Pariat presents her award-winning novel Everything the Light Touches, in which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe himself appears as one of the protagonists. His journey to Italy, and in particular his botanical studies, are the focus of one of the story’s episodes.

Shai is a disillusioned and tired young Indian woman, but determined to find herself. A trip to say goodbye to her old nanny will make her discover indigenous roots that tell her more about the future than the big city did. Evelyn is a student in Edwardian England who dares to take an interest in botany and set sail for India not to find a husband, but a plant to study. And then there is Goethe, the writer, who finds a decisive and illuminating inspiration during his trip to Italy. Three stories, three eras, three different places. Three characters who, at a certain point in their lives, find themselves searching for a plant known as Diengiei, which thanks to a constant self-metamorphosis would seem to contain within itself the characteristics of any other plant in the world. Different journeys, but united by listening to a timeless nature in which everything resonates, everything is connected: the urgency of emotions, the need for reflection, the thirst for adventure and justice. Whether the Diengiei is real or legendary in the end does not matter, in the quest they find something truly precious: a path to follow that gives serenity and fulfilment to their lives. A book to immerse oneself in, a daring novel with surprising evocative power, from one of the most appreciated voices in contemporary Indian fiction and poetry.

The event will take place in English language.

Janice Pariat @ Janice Pariat

Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories and the novels Seahorse and The Nine Chambered-Heart, which have been bestsellers in India and translated into ten languages, including Italian, Spanish, French and German. She won the Sahitya Akademi’s Young Writer Award and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013.
Her novel Everything the Light Touches was published by HarperCollins India, Borough Press UK and HarperVia USA in October 2022. It was included in The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 list and won the Auther Award for Best Fiction, the Sushila Devi Award, and the Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize. It is published in Italian by Salani Editore.
In 2014 she was the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Kent, UK, and in 2019 she was a Writer in Residence at the TOJI Residency in South Korea. In autumn 2024, Janice will be a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation Centre in Bellagio, Italy.
She currently teaches creative writing and art history at Ashoka University and lives between Shillong and New Delhi with a cat of many names.