Episode 2: Aanchal Malhotra's "The Book of Everlasting Things"
Aanchal Malhotra is a Delhi-based writer and oral historian, author of "Remnants of a Separation", "In the Language of Remembering", and "The Book of Everlasting Things", her first novel that we’ll be discussing today. "The Book of Everlasting Things" tells a story both deeply intimate and widely encompassing of time, place, and history. It follows the lives of Samir, a Hindu perfumer, and Firdaus, a Muslim calligrapher, from when they meet as children in Lahore, in undivided India, fall in love, and then their journeys apart beyond Partition. Like most books I love, this one is ambitious, moving beyond the confines of national or regional boundaries out into the world, yet all the while paying loving attention to detail—to place and historical moment, to the art and rigour of perfumery and calligraphy, to the hope held out by love.