We are delighted to announce the acquisition of TASHAN MEHTA’S NEW NOVEL –
Mad Sisters of Esi
HarperCollins India is delighted to announce the acquisition of Tashan Mehta’s bold new novel – Mad Sisters of Esi. Hailed as one of the ‘most gifted an original writers you’ll ever read’, Tashan’s latest book will be published in 2023.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
‘Tashan Mehta is one of the most gifted, original writers you’ll ever read. MAD SISTERS shows us, again, her skill with both the cosmic and the deeply personal. All of it is magical.’
– SAMIT BASU, author of CHOSEN SPIRITS and THE CITY INSIDE
‘Sometimes a fantasy comes along so startling and so keenly felt that it changes the way you look at the world for the better. Wonderfully immersive, deeply pleasurable and utterly original, the MAD SISTERS OF ESI is a classic in the making and the best book I’ve read in years.’
– HELEN MARSHALL, author of THE MIGRATION and winner of the World Fantasy Award
ABOUT THE BOOK
Within our universe, there is another universe growing.
Myung and Laleh are keepers of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak fables of themselves, and pray to an enigmatic figure they know only as “Great Wisa.” To Laleh, this is everything.
For Myung, it is not enough.
When Myung plots to escape the whale, she stumbles upon an age-old mystery that has confounded scholars for generations: the tale of the mad sisters of Esi. Filled with academia, fables, and dreams, sweeping across three landscapes, and featuring a museum of collective memory and a festival of madness, MAD SISTERS OF ESI asks: in the wilderness of this world, what will you choose to hold on to?
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Talking about the book, Tashan Mehta says ‘Mad Sisters of Esi arrived in my life out of nowhere and spent the next four years teaching me how to write it. I love this novel: it is a book that feels wholly outside of myself, a story that channeled its way into existence through me. Ostensibly, it is about sisters and family, identity and belonging, but at its core, it is simply this: a love letter to our madness.
I am delighted HarperCollins India took a chance on this novel, and that Mad Sisters has found such a safe and supportive home.’
Swati Daftuar, Executive Editor at HarperCollins India, adds ‘Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta is so bold and self-assured in its style and plotting, so full of colours and complexities, that the world she creates in it feels entirely and completely alive, as if it was always there, waiting for us to discover it. Myung and Laleh’s journey has a kind of haunting, aching beauty, and it’s impossible to not find yourself thinking of them long after you’ve turned the last page. I’m incredibly pleased to publish this book, and I can’t wait to see it on the shelves and in the hands of what I believe will be some very happy readers.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tashan Mehta is the author of The Liar’s Weave, which was shortlisted for the Prabha Khaitan Woman’s Voice Award. Her short stories have featured in Magical Women, the Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction: Volume II, and PodCastle, and have been shortlisted for the Toto Funds the Arts Award. She was fellow at the 2015 and 2021 Sangam House International Writers’ Residency (India) and writer-in-residence at Anglia Ruskin University (UK) in 2018. In 2020, she created the artefact On Unknown Things for the Barbican (UK), which sought to capture the essence of the multidisciplinary residency Fieldwork 0.2. More recently, she was invited to CERN IdeaSquare (Switzerland), alongside other writers and scientists, to develop stories that can communicate new-age technologies to the public.
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For review copies, interviews, excerpts or more information, please write to: sohela.singh@harpercollins.co.in
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