Blog tour: Sylvia

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Welcome to the blog tour for Sylvia by Maithreyi Karnoor!

More about the book…

Longing to connect to his ancestral roots, Cajetan Pereira has taken up residence near one of the rare and mystical Baobab trees in South India. Into his world walks Sylvia, a young woman in search of a story. They bond over their new-found relationship, until one day consumed by regret, Sylvia disappears.

In a rich kaleidoscope of tales, Sylvia is glimpsed in the lives of other characters as a colleague, friend, wife, and lover, until she comes back into focus as she finds herself becoming whole once more – but is it too late?

Brimming with exquisite prose, Sylvia is a beautifully woven tapestry of the ways in which we leave indelible imprints on each other’s lives.

More about the author…

Maithreyi Karnoor is a Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow in creative writing and translation at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

She has been shortlisted for The Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize for A Handful of Sesame, her translation of a Kannada novel.

She is a two-time finalist for The Montreal International Poetry Prize.

Sylvia is her debut novel.

She lives in Bangalore, India.

My impressions…

Wow! For such a short book, it packs a lot of meaning! I loved the Indian setting and the exploration of the Indian diaspora and its repercussions. I also thoroughly enjoyed the unique format of the book – with the first part reading like a more conventional novel, and the second part reading more like short stories, like fragments of life. And you can tell that the author is a poet and translator: apart from the lyrical quality of the prose, every single word used feels intentional. This book might fall out of some readers’ comfort zones but it's a place that it’s worth going to!

Three words to describe it. Lyrical. Unique. Evocative.

Do I like the cover? Yes, it’s stunning.

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, this is a debut novel and I haven’t read any of the author’s poetic output or her translations yet.

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