Latitudes of Longing

"The Latitudes of Longing" is Shubhangya Swaroop’s literary debut—an enchanting work of magical realism rooted in Indian folklore. Through smart, subtle, lyrical parables about the search for love and closeness, Swaroop’s stories unfold in an exquisite, patterned style that feels as obedient as a bedtime fairy tale from a grandmother. Four parts of the book, four separate stories—“Islands,” “Rift,” “Valley,” and “The Snowy Desert”—cover the Andaman Islands, Myanmar, Nepal, and “no-man’s land” between India and Pakistan. The author, an award-winning journalist, has visited every place she describes, teaching there and—under cover of her work—as a reporter. Having explored hidden corners of unknown worlds, she opens a door for us to the border between mythic and real (yet no less astonishing). In “The Latitudes of Longing,” we meet the wife of a scholar who converses with ghosts; a turtle that turns into a boat; a lonely yeti; eighty-year-old lovers; a revolutionary romantic; a noble smuggler… But the main—and unexpectedly human—hero of the entire book becomes nature itself, the Universe itself: the great witness of love within the endless cycle of creation and destruction of life.