Yalpanam
Country: Malaysia
Author Name: Shivani Sivagurunathan
Publisner Name: Penguin Southeast Asia; Penguin Random House SEA was launched in October 2018 to bring local writing from the South East Asian region to a wider audience, breaking barriers of language and geographies. We are a subsidiary of the well-established and well-respected global publishing house,...
Original Language: English
Yalpanam centres on one hundred and eighty-five year old recluse, Pushpanayagi, who is on the brink of a transformation after having avoided her past for decades.
When eighteen year old Maxim Cheah, disgruntled at home, aching for freedom, for answers about her life, arrives on an apparent whim at “Yalpanam”—the old lady’s house—they begin an unlikely friendship that will give the girl a temporary home, and send Pushpanayagi whirling through space-time, back to the past.
Returning to 19th century and 1940s Malaya, to early 19th century Ceylon, the old lady encounters people long dead—Charles Tanner, a rigid British lepidopterist, his melancholic first wife Mary, his vibrant second wife Savitri, their seemingly subservient servant Abu—and is faced with the reality of her actions, and her denials.
Will the past release her?
As Pushpanayagi battles with her psychical upheaval, Maxim finds a place for herself at Yalpanam, and grows into her new friendship with Hadi, the vegetable seller.
But a person can only run away for so long.
Pushpanayagi and Maxim must embark on a journey fraught with lies, shadows, ghosts, and
...realizations at times too painful to bear, and discover, in their own unique but intertwined ways, the path to inner liberation.
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