WEAVING WATER: Ryhaan Shah’s second novel released in London

Jun 02, 2013 The Arts Forum

WEAVING WATER, Ryhaan Shah’s second novel, was released on Monday May 20th by Cutting Edge Press, London, UK.
The novel follows the fortunes of several jahajis who made the last crossing from India in 1917 aboard the SS Ganges. A baby, Neela, born aboard the ship grows up to move through the events that unfold. She is a link with beliefs that go back to ancient times and a source of strength for all that the jahajis face in their new home.

RYHAAN SHAH

Weaving Water is written as a mythical tale of triumph and defeat, of heroism and struggle, as the characters face social upheavals including the political turmoil that has marked the Guyana landscape.
Shah says that the idea for the central character, Neela, came from a friend who told her about her grandmother who was born aboard one of the last ships to bring indentured labourers from India to then British Guiana, and whose birth certificate stated: Born at sea.
“I thought: a baby girl born at sea and with no ties to the earth…. It was magic, and the story was woven, so to speak, from that central magical idea,” Shah says.
The novel is available immediately as an eBook at Amazon.com. The print edition will follow shortly.
The cover art for the novel was done by Guyanese artist, Bernadette Persaud, and photography for the book’s jacket was done by Dwayne Hackett.
Shah’s third book, A Death in the Family, will be published by Cutting Edge Press in July.
Her first novel, A Silent Life, was published in 2005 by Peepal Tree Press, and won the Guyana Prize for the Best First Book in 2007.

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THE ARTS FORUM is an independent platform that emerged in 2002 out of the need to support the creative arts and give space and voice to those artists in Guyana whose works were under-represented and hardly existed in the national consciousness.
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