Spring 2022 Fiction Preview: A Convergence of Solitudes by Anita Anand

Today, our Spring 2022 Preview series features Anita Anand’s A Convergence of Solitudes, a story of identity, connection and forgiveness in the lives of two families across Partition of India, Operation Babylift in Vietnam, and two referendums in Quebec.

Sunil and Hima, teenage lovers, bravely defy taboos in pre-Partition India to come together as their country divides in two. They move across the world to Montreal and raise a family, but Sunil shows symptoms of schizophrenia, shattering their newfound peace. As a teenager, their daughter Rani becomes obsessed with Quebecois supergroup Sensibilité—and, in particular, the band’s charismatic, nationalistic frontman, Serge Giglio—whose music connects Rani to the province’s struggle for cultural freedom. A chance encounter leads Rani to babysit Mélanie, Serge’s adopted daughter from Vietnam, bringing her fleetingly within his inner circle. Years later, Rani, now a college guidance counselor, discovers that Mélanie has booked an appointment to discuss her future at the school.

“Refracted through the lens of Quebec’s years of turbulence and hope, A Convergence of Solitudes tells the truth about the world: there were never only two solitudes, but many. By gathering us all, atoms of light, Anita Anand has focused the blazing beauty of our richness and possibility, transmuting us in our yearning and our pain into shining creatures of love.  This may be the essential story of our place and our time: the world, once and always,” writes Elise Moser, author of Lily and Taylor.

We’re delighted to share a little introduction written by Anita Anand. Enjoy!

In 2015, a few months after the publication of my debut collection of short stories [Swing in the House and Other Stories], I was invited to a book club. Everyone there had read my book. And each person there had their own take on it. One reader said she laughed a lot at the humour in the stories, while another gave her a look of complete incomprehension. Another said she felt like she was watching movies, and began to describe her favourite scene, one that I had almost forgotten about and had imagined slightly differently. Each reader was struck by different images and situations, related to different characters, had different opinions, as well as theories on why certain authorial or editorial decisions had been taken.  In other words, they found their own meaning, and told me things I didn’t know about my own book.

I look forward to witnessing that alchemy between my writing and my readers again with A Convergence of Solitudes. Hopefully, my decision to combine and link stories spanning pre-Partition in India, Operation Babylift in Vietnam, to the aftermath of the second referendum in Québec, will be an intriguing proposition. I set out to write a multi-layered but highly readable novel in which there is a sufficient variety of characters, settings and individual struggles to provide something of compelling interest to everyone.  I can imagine readers identifying with different characters and different struggles, disagreeing with each other, and finding new meaning.

I am especially eager to hear about all the movies.