Moth: One of the Observer's 'Ten Debut Novelists' of 2021

Product Information

Immersing herself in the culture resulted in a very credible story as Melody Razak brings the characters of Moth very much alive for the reader. This is the tale of a family that is torn asunder by the unexpected atrocities inflicted during Partition, a family that had a standing in society, two intellectual parents and their young daughters Alma and Roop. Her younger sister Roop is a free spirited individual with a very quirky personality. Roop sees the world very differently from others in her family. She fears nothing, has a peculiar relationship with death and, as the story progresses, she becomes very important to the family’s survival. Some two million people died, and the trauma lives on in their survivors and descendants. In addition, an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 women were kidnapped and raped during Partition. Some were forcibly converted to their abductor’s religion and coerced into marriage. A pact signed in Delhi in 1950 sought to find and repatriate these women, but many of them didn’t want to go home. They were afraid they’d be killed by their own families for having dishonored them. I won’t say this is by far the best partition literature that I have read, however I did enjoy this unique insight which encapsulated historical events and experiences flawlessly. There were a few instances where Hindi phrases were misprinted which I am willing to overlook as it was written by someone who is uninitiated to the language and they were far and few!

An inspiring and entertaining collection of unforgettable true stories about finding unexpected beauty in life’s transitions will debut on March 19, 2024! Brown house moth Hofmannophila pseudospretella (Stainton)". Canadian Grain Commission. 2013-08-30 . Retrieved April 6, 2018. Bookworm". Oxford English Dictionary. Lexico. Archived from the original on June 19, 2019 . Retrieved June 19, 2019. Whilst it is Partition that drives the book forward, the focus is predominantly on the women. The Guardian review finishes by saying: With its unflinching focus on violence against women, her strong, captivating debut tells a story that is at once firmly rooted in a time and place and yet pressingly relevant to the here and now.

Need help with ID?

Before becoming a writer, Razak was a pastry chef and cake shop owner, and India’s culinary riches flavour her prose just so. Dilchain the cook, for instance – a woman who carries her own trauma and keeps a jar filled with unrequited love – spoils the family with kulfi and jelabis. “Knead until your face is pink and hot,” she tells Alma, teaching her to make paratha dough. “When you can’t breathe, then you know it’s ready.” The sounds of muezzin that float across the city are soothing, the air is soft with the scent of jasmine and rose, and conversations are strewn with quotes from Tagore. At least, that’s how the first half of Moth reads. However, this is as much a story of the riving of naivety as it is about the loss of innocence, and partition’s agonies go abruptly from being a political tragedy, discussed over supper, to a source of intense personal anguish. Meanwhile, a “shattered” Delhi fills with displaced souls. Wiener, Ann Elizabeth (2018). "What's That Smell You're Reading?". Distillations. 4 (1): 36–39 . Retrieved July 11, 2018. Field guide to the moths of Great Britain and Ireland. Paul Waring & Martin Townsend, 2009. Illustrations of all macro-moths in natural resting postures plus detailed field notes. British Wildlife Publishing. I discovered The Moth phenomenon, not in its original format or the podcast, but as this book. It happened through complete serendipity in a Dublin bookshop a year ago - the type of real-life serendipity which algorithms make so hard to come by online. Somehow, it called out to me, and I'm glad I listened to my gut and bought the book, as it was honestly one of the few life-altering books in my life. Plus, it led me to discover the wonderful podcast.

Alma: the beating heart of the novel. We meet her as a precocious 14-year old who becomes entangled with the chaos of Partition with devastating consequences Year 6 pupils at Grange Farm Primary School in Coventry worked in small teams to explore the impact of pollution on the peppered moth, natural selection and survival! A trillion words, a million perspectives, over thousands of books, yet, nothing.... nothing braces you as the horrors washes anew with every account told, with every memory rehearsed from the partition era. And this feeling of things falling apart is very dominant in the book. Our focus is a Brahmin family, mother and father both lecturers at the local university. This immediately tells you something about the family at that time, and the mother experiences plenty of discrimination because she is not a man. The family is preparing for the wedding of their young daughter, Alma, a wedding they are not sure is a good idea but which they feel they need to proceed with to protect her. Because all around them, the threat of violence is continually growing as Partition approaches.That being said, I appreciated Razak’s commentary on religion, nationalism, colonialism, fascism, feminism, classism, etc. As I now understand, this period, the Partition Era, and India's Independence were wrought with political and social upheaval. To Razak’s credit, I felt that with her debut novel she attempted to speak on the multiplicity of issues that were occurring during this period, through the experience of this fictional family. I believe this story was meant to elicit relatability and emotionality to the circumstances via a domestic setting. Learn to write a sciku – In this video, you’ll meet some of Isabel’s favourite moths, record notes using a special template, and learn how to turn these notes into a science haiku or ‘sciku’.