Author: Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
Publisher: Penguin/Viking
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 298
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670057681
Description
Pirouetting between laughter and tears, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi’s technicolour debut tells the story of four extraordinary lives. Of Anuradha Gandharva, gifted with astonishing beauty and magical songs; of her husband, Vardhmaan, struggling with secret losses; of Nandini, a deviously alluring artist, with a penchant for panthers and walking on water; and of Shloka, the Gandharvas delicate, disturbingly silent child.
As their fates unravel in an old villa in 1920s India, they learn to navigate the ever-changing landscape of love, and in doing so encounter a host of eccentrics: Mr Bunkusdaas, the father of Bollywood cinema; Stella Dimm, England’s first ever Tit girl; Libya Dass, rarely seen out of her porcelain bathtub; and Percival Worthington, the aristocratically limp son of the governor of Bombay, on whom Nandini rashly sets her sights.
The Last Song of Dusk is a tale of exquisite friendships, immense sacrifices and dangerous desires. Told with tenderness and with dazzling wit, it will haunt you long after you have turned the final page.
REVIEWS
A colourful first novel, what begins as an erotic fairy tale grows into an exploration of love and loss, sexuality and innocence, friendship and solitude, Shanghvi’s loose, poetic style, is cut with a dash of magical realism, and his story has eloquent insights into the nature of love.
-The Times Literary Supplement
2004’s hottest literary sensation.
-India Today
A magical debut, Madcap characters shimmy across the pages, throwing out slangy witticisms with insouciant charm, but underneath the glitz the mood is mythically melancholy, Delicious.
-Elle