Wow! eBook
God on Every Wind
Author(s): Farhad Sorabjee (Author)
- Publisher: Parthian Books
- Publication Date: 29 Aug. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 274 pages
- ISBN-10: 1908069902
- ISBN-13: 9781908069900
Book Description
Philomena is a born rebel, disillusioned with her middle-class comfort and the expectations of her parents. Nestor is an impoverished African exile with the heart of a poet. When the two meet by chance on the streets of 1960s Bombay, their attraction will change their lives forever.
Editorial Reviews
Review
God on Every Wind is the first novel by lawyer, screenwriter and playwright Farhad Sorabjee. His experience in writing for theatre is evident in the spare dramatic dialogue and lean crafted structure and style. In using a quotation from Blake as a title, Farhad Sorabjee shows his love of the beauty, rhythm and pace of poetic language and its ability to portray emotion. He tells his story of love, loss, regret and rebellion, both individual and political, with a light touch allowing the reader’s imagination to roam free. The story is split between two continents in the second half of the twentieth century. Philomena is born in India in 1944, three years before India gained independence and the creation of Pakistan. She rebels against her middle-class parents. Her mantra: ‘The only religion is the pursuit of experience.’ When she wants something ‘she just goes and gets it’. Falling in love with Nestor fulfils all her needs: to rebel against the expectations of her anglophile parents and to open herself up to new experiences. Nestor is a poor African student: a poet who lets no one read his poetry. He returns to Africa as a rebel fighter heedless of the advice of Philomena’s father: ‘Never surrender your own happiness to the world - it is too stupid and shallow to understand the sacrifice!’ Philomena goes with him. Africa is the stage on which a variety of complex and painfully realistic relationships are played out. From time to time the darker themes of turbulence, both emotional and political, are leavened by stories such as the saga of the biryani, the hugely expensive firework, the story told by the block of Indian stone, or the family house defending itself against intruders. Although Philomena could be flippantly characterised as a brat, the author gives us enough information about her to enable the reader to build up a picture of her in order to start to understand and forgive her: how her childhood blindness shaped her, how the people who best demonstrated their love for her were not necessarily her family. Thus when she cries with the ‘deep bitter despair of redemption irretrievably forgone’ at the death of her mother, we can sympathise with her flawed assumption that ‘her mother was always going to be there, there was always later.’ Farhad Sorabjee has indeed captured the careless joys of childhood, the responsibilities and demands of the middle years, and the quiet reflection of age. There is much here that will feel familiar to a twenty-first century European reader even if, like the author, you have never visited Africa. I do recommend this beautiful bitter-sweet novel. -- Catriona Jackson @ http://www.gwales.com
About the Author
Farhad Sorabjee is based in Mumbai, India. He is a playwright with a rising profile in the UK. Productions of his work have been read at the Royal Court and Soho Theatres. His latest play Hard Places will be produced in the UK in 2012.
