Tag-Archive for ◊ soul mate ◊

Author:
• Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Diana Evans was born in London but lived part of her childhood in Lagos, Nigeria. She studied Media at the University of Sussex and obtained a Masters degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia.

She was a dancer before turning to journalism as a feature writer and critic for Marie Claire, The Independent, The Observer, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.

Diana Evans’ first novel 26 a, published in 2005, won the Orange Award for New Writers in the same year and received a nomination for the Guardian First Book Award. She was also short listed for the Whitbread First Novel and Commonwealth Best First Book Awards.

26 a has been translated into several languages. The Wonder, published in 2009, is Diana Evans second novel. Diana Evans lives in London, England.

26 a, Diana Evan’s first novel dedicated to her twin sister, Paula, is semi autobiographical, having lived the loss of Paula, who committed suicide in 1998 while a young adult. The story takes place mainly in Neasden, London and partly in Nigeria.

26 Waifer Avenue, Neasden, in North West London is the home of the Hunter family. 26 a is the loft where the identical twin-children and soul mate, Georgia and Bessi Hunter live and chose to barricade themselves from the outside world. They created their own haven where nobody was allowed in without knocking and where they could discuss important matters without interference.

They managed to secure their den from the oppressive atmosphere down below, in the house, with their homesick, melancholic, Nigerian mother, Ida, who discourses with “spirits” and their depressed, English, alcoholic father, Aubrey, who hasn’t learned “how to master his demons” and who turns from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde, when he is drunk. Their elder sister Bel nurtured them and their younger sister, Kemy, was eager to become part of their secluded world as their third twin.

They built a childhood universe of make believe, where they felt they could fulfil their innocent dreams. Unfortunately, reality caught up with them as they became adults. They had to learn to break the unbreakable bond, their dependent magical relationship and grow apart by accepting that the “twoness” becomes a “oneness”.

A nostalgic, moving, bittersweet tale about searching for personal as well as cultural identity, skillfully written with a great deal of feeling and sensitivity. The poignantly dark, supernatural ending to the story creates a link to the emotionally two petrified furies of the beginning of the novel and contrast with the humoristic narration in between.

In the Observer issue of 6th February 2005, Diana Evans wrote under “My other half”, “A personal essay on twinness”, how after the suicide of her twin sister Paula, Diana felt her sister’s presence haunting her everywhere she went, even in her dreams. She was even speaking at times like her sister with the same voice, finding herself laughing the same way, which made her feel spooky.

Diana Evans felt that she was now living her life for two persons, her twin sister has always been part of her and remains very much so, even after her death. She went on to say that being a twin does not end when one of you disappears, “because there is never really only one of you. Once a twin, always a twin”.

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Author:
• Saturday, October 24th, 2009

Abha Dawesar was born in New Delhi, India, in 1974. She obtained a degree in philosophy from Harvard University and started a career in finance which she had to forgo when her two novels, Miniplanner and Babyji became great successes.

Abha Dawesar received the Lambda Literary Award in 2005 and the American Library Association’s Stonewall Award in 2006. She was also awarded a Fiction Fellowship in 2000 by the New York foundation of the Arts. Abha Dawesar lives in New York.

Due to her young age, her bibliography is short, but acclaimed by critics.
She published Miniplanner in 2000.
Her second novel Babyji was published in 2005.
That Summer in Paris was published in 2006.
Family Values was published in 2009.

Abha Dawesar is a self taught video maker and a visual artist. Her photographs have been exhibited in New York City.

That Summer in Paris is the story of a successful, Nobel prize winner, seventy five-year-old Indian writer, Prem Rustum who discovers that his life is nearly over without him seeing the years passing. He realises that he has spent too much time writing novels. In spite of his old age he hasn’t given up on love and decides to rest his pen and enjoy the few years left for him to live, preferably with a charming female soul mate.

Searching on Internet under his name, he discovers unexpectedly messages from one of his admirers, Maya; an intellectual, ambitious, twenty five year old aspiring writer, who admits openly on the web her admiration and passion for his work. He decides to meet her. They felt captivated by each other’s charm straight away and on a whim Prem decides to follow Maya, from New York to Paris, where she has a writing fellowship. The unconventional, uneasy relationship between the two main characters begins.

Prem’s love for Maya will make him reminisce over his old incestuous love with his older sister Meher, to his sensual experience with the two sixteen-year old French girls and will confront him with his rekindled desires and his approaching mortality. The theme of life and death mentioned in the novel, is a subject which Dawesar is obsessed with, as she mentioned it in one of her interviews.

For the romance to take place the author couldn’t have chosen a better clichéd place than Paris, the most beautiful and romantic city in the world, which Dawesar is very found of and visits often. The very meticulous description of the people, the paintings, the city’s streets, restaurants and French gastronomy, the various attractions and art galleries, transports the readers into a different world of romantic fantasy, but also a meditation about ageing, passion, achievement, literature and art.

The detailed and explicit descriptions of the sex scenes are gratuitous, perverse and crude, it undermines an otherwise good story about lost love, relationships and the beauty of how art can influence love and love, art. Which promotes the immortality of real love and genuine art. In her endeavour to sex-up her story, Dawesar belittles the interesting and numerous discussions between Prem, his Parisian friend, Pascal Boutin, the famous novelist and Maya his muse.