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

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I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists, although I had been aware of it as it featured on the influential Observer Best Debut Novelists of the Year feature for 2021 alongside such other successful and impressive books as “Little Scratch” (2021 Desmond Elliott Prize shortlist), “Open Water” (2021 Desmond Elliott Prize longlist, Costa First Novel Award winner), “Lear Wife” and “Assembly” (also on the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize and for me the best novel of 2021). 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.”

Ma and Bappu are liberal intellectuals teaching at the local university. Their fourteen year-old daughter – precocious, headstrong Alma– is soon to be married: Alma is mostly interested in the wedding shoes and in spinning wild stories for her beloved younger sister Roop, a restless child obsessed with death. 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. Also, the end is meant to be inspirational despite the previous gratuitous and horrifying scene but I struggled to see the point of inspiration or the point of that last scene. Was it really her India? No. Her body wasn't even her body. She was abducted. You can't take your audience through that entire novel in which you emphasize that women are not equal humans in this scenario and don't have the same agency as men in any capacity and then try to convince us in the last scene that it is somehow "her India", it felt patronizing. Why end on a high note when the entire point of your novel was meant to emphasize suffering and horror, and the crimes of humanity against one another? It's like putting a bow on a pile of shit, what's the point? This revised and now comprehensive edition is an essential part of the library of any moth- or butterfly enthusiast.This one really explores not only the cultural divide that was perpetrated by the British that led to serious violence. Equally it explores gender roles within the different cultures and how even educated women struggled in a male dominated society. It also touches upon the caste system and its impact on different people's fortunes. I felt like I learned a lot but was also touched by the different generations of this family and the impact of their decisions as they rippled through the most turbulent time of their lives. I felt that the last part of this novel was more of a "misery, begets misery, begets misery, begets misery, etc." We know. She did not understand that her setting and time period spoke to that implicitly without having to overexplain or emphasize. And yet, this is the 1940s, and with news of atrocities spilling from Punjab, where religious violence against women in particular grows worse by the day, they’ve let Brahma’s mother – a meddlesome, haunted hater – arrange a match for Alma. Alma parries their anxieties with her own enthusiasm for marriage to the 22-year-old stranger, but even as wedding preparations gather pace, it’s hard to shake the dread instilled by the novel’s dreamlike – nightmarish, really – opening moments. Parish CE School in St Helens used Moth to inspire every class to create a stunning collaborative moth artwork

This is an excellent volume, and will justly be consulted alongside moth guides relying on artwork or set specimens to assist the ever increasing number of moth enthusiasts in identifying their catches." 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. The book contains 50 stories that they promise aren't necessarily the best, but are those that lend themselves well to the written word, with only light editing. These stories are taken from the mainstage show and thus are told by the likes of President Clinton's press secretary, astronaut Michael Massimino, rapper Run DMC, and others. Although these stories had at their core values we can all relate to — being alone, being afraid — I still found it a bit hard to penetrate the world of celebrity. (That some of the stories are by Moth staff, and the book has a preface, a forward, and an introduction, further contributes to the self-congratulatory air.) Alma is the daughter of two professors, coming from an educated upper class family, you'd expect her fate to be reaching for the stars. Instead, the stars are literally dictating her future. When her horoscope predicts ill, her well-intentioned grandmother lies to get her a good marriage match. This sets off a series of events that tears her family apart. Set in the time of Partition and Indian Independence, we get a deep dive into the turmoil of the time, especially the impact on women's rights. Concise guide to the moths of Great Britain and Ireland. Martin Townsend & Paul Waring, 2007. Illustrations of all macro-moths in natural resting postures plus concise field notes. British Wildlife Publishing.

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For those who are unaware, The Moth is an institution dedicated to the craft of storytelling. It's a live event which occurs in cities around the world, where anyone can get up and spin a yarn about an interesting time in their life. These thought-provoking tales are available on YouTube or in podcast format and now for the first time in book form, where fifty of the best have been carefully selected. 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.