About BC Books Online
BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Description
In the literary tradition of Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy, this ambitious debut novel is a moving tale of family, tradition, loss and reconciliation.
Meet Janaki and Mallika, two sisters from a middle-class Brahmin family in Madras, India. Janaki is a musical prodigy, sublimely gifted on the veena, but will soon be eighteen and dreads her aunt's schemes for an arranged marriage. Eschewing tradition, she runs off with a Muslim Bollywood star. Years later, Mallika receives a letter from Janaki, who is returning to Madras.
In confident prose that resembles the rhythms and progression of an Indian raga, Ameen Merchant captures in rich detail the world of these Brahmin women, a world restricted by caste and cultural rules but also teeming with colour, music and food. It is a story about the traditions that bind us and the sacrifices we must make along the road to our own Individual destinies.
Editorial Reviews
"A richly painted tale, revealing the caged heart of an artist who longs to soar on the power of her music...This is a gem of a novel, filled with brilliant imagery and an elegant style of writing. Readers will be filled with a sense of music playing, just a little out of hearing range. It's both a classical Indian raga and Bollywood soundtrack."
— Toronto Star
"The details of family life, food, music, Bollywood movies and the texture of everything from saris to sunburnt grass are delicious in this lively first novel."
— More Magazine
"What Merchant does well is create a sense of reality through description. He brings a market scene alive with his depiction of colours and fragrances."
— Winnipeg Free Press
"A moving tale of family, tradition, loss and reconciliation. In prose that resembles the rhythms of an Indian raga Ameen Merchant captures the world of these Brahmin women, a world restricted by caste and cultural rules, but also teeming with colour, music and food."
— Delta Optimist
"This debut from Mumbai-born Ameen Merchant...offers a recognizable lyricism, unfolding a rich banquet for the senses and a sensitive tale of two middle-class sisters driven apart by the hidebound traditions of their Brahmin heritage...We expect our novels of India to be kaleidoscopic and redolent, filled with scents and colours, the heady masala of cookery, the ever-present fecundity and decay of city life. Here, the kitchens and gardens, steaming streets and overheating bodies feel present to all the senses. Better, they're fully integrated with the storytelling. Merchant never pauses to paint a backdrop; the richness comes to us always through characters and events."
— Globe & Mail
"[Merchant] has a writer's eye for colour and action, a writer's ear for language and music, and a writer's obsessive interest in the patterns of human behaviour."
— Quill & Quire
"The Silent Raga...is a hugely entrancing tale of two sisters...Merchant's words verge on pure poetry as uniquely evocative of India as the sound of the santoor, the hammered dulcimar."
— Canadian Immigrant
"The Silent Raga...is an exquisite blend of tradition and transition, exile and reconciliation, silence and eloquence, society and self, crisis and consciousness, where various stages of a raga's performance in recital breathe life into the mellifluous flourish of evocative prose...[it] eventually leaves readers in the refuge of an enchanting mistress, music."
— Canadian Literature
