Silvia

Cadjetan Pereira returned to his homeland, Goa, after spending his entire life outside it. He rents a house next to a baobab tree that reminds him of his childhood in Tanzania. Suddenly, his niece appears—one he didn’t even know about. This is only one of many stories told in the novel “Sylvia.” The book is about hope, loss, mental health, and love—and about how we leave traces in each other’s lives. The author, Maitreyi Karnur, lives in Bangalore, India, and says her main heroine shouldn’t be in the spotlight, because we are all secondary characters in other people’s lives.