Paul van den Hout Book order (chronological)

Piya is a young Bengali cetologist brought up in the US. She arrives in the Sundarbans, the islands where the Ganges merges into the Bay of Bengal, to conduct an ecological survey on dolphins. Having been schooled in the US, Piya is fully westernized and does not know any Bengali. A drowning accident leads her to become reliant on a boatman as guide and protector in the violent Sundarbans. She also meets Kanai, a young Bengali professional man visiting the area on a family matter. Between them, the three weave an intriguing tale of history, folklore, ecology, migration, love and grief.

Persoonlijk getinte schets van het leven in de stad New York.

"The first voice we hear in Gina B. Nahai's second novel is that of Lili, the grown daughter of a miraculous mother. When Lili was 5 and living in the Jewish ghetto of Tehran, her mother, Roxanna, "had grown wings, one night when the darkness was the color of her dreams, and flown into the star-studded night of Iran that claimed her." Thirteen years would pass, Lili informs us, before she would find her mother again. This short introduction serves as a framing device for the story of Roxanna's life, a life begun as a "bad-luck" child. According to her sister, Miriam the Moon, she "had been a runaway before she ever became a wife or a mother, before she came into existence or was even conceived."

Een vrouw gaat in haar verleden zoeken om een oplossing te vinden voor een steeds terugkerende nachtmerrie.