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See also www.anoshirani.com and www.anoshirani.blogspot.com
80,000 words hardcover
Final manuscript available
Canada: Doubleday, Spring 2010
Italy: Piemme, Dec 2010
India (English): HarperCollins India
Turkey: Inkilap Kitabevi
(Photo: Ryan Martis)
Anosh Irani was born and brought up in Bombay, India and moved to Vancouver in 1998. He is the author of the acclaimed novels The Cripple and His Talismans and The Song of Kahunsha, which was a finalist for CBC Radio's Canada Reads and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, was published in thirteen countries, and was a bestseller in Canada and Italy. His play Bombay Black was a Dora Award winner for Outstanding New Play. Irani was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Drama for his anthology The Bombay Plays: The Matka King & Bombay Black.
a novel by Anosh Irani
SET IN THE TOWN OF DAHANU ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF BOMBAY, THIS IS A TALE OF TWO OPPOSING CLANS – THE IRANIS AND THE WARLIS – AND THE FORBIDDEN LOVE THAT BRINGS THEM TOGETHER, WITH TRAGIC RESULTS
- Longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize
- 'Memories of Dahanu Road' - The Hindu
- Read interviews with Anosh in The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star
- Hear Anosh on CBC Radio's The Next Chapter
“Anosh Irani has a talent for peeling back layers of history and class in brilliant tales that are wittily folkloric, devastatingly political, and flamboyantly mythological. He must come from a long line of storytellers, fire keepers and, I suspect, also magicians.” — RAWI HAGE
“A beautiful novel, Dahanu Road is big with love and infused with the passion of Anosh Irani's gentle yet shrewd prose.” — DONNA MORRISSEY, author of What They Wanted and Kit's Law
Zairos is a dissolute young landowner's son living in the town of Dahanu, just outside Bombay, when his life of careless luxury is brought up short by a mysterious death: the sudden suicide of Ganpat, a tribal worker on his family's estate. Soon Zairos has fallen in love with Ganpat's daughter Kusum, and finds himself defying taboos with their relationship. At the same time his grandfather, Shapur, reveals to him the story of their family and of the land that Zairos stands to inherit. Violence and hatred echo through history, and Zairos learns the terrible truth his grandfather has spent a lifetime hiding.
With an inimitable mix of earthy humour and searing tragedy, bestselling author Anosh Irani gives us his most ambitious novel yet.
PRAISE FOR DAHANU ROAD
“Dahanu Road offers a blend of personal family memories, historic truths and rich storytelling. … He has given us a world both different and disturbingly familiar. … An account of cultural battles and a cautionary tale of unintended consequences that will stretch into the 21st century … it’s proof positive that there’s another superior talent from Southeast Asia living here. In writing about distant worlds [Irani] shows us the exotic Other, while at the same time enacting on foreign stages the moral challenges we all face.” — THE NATIONAL POST
“Irani keeps the intricate story moving … as grandfather and grandson struggle with the behaviours expected of their class. … A fascinating look at what can and can’t be controlled despite the best of intentions.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“Simply told and nicely paced. Readers who have never set foot in India will get a feel for the country.” — THE VANCOUVER SUN
“[A] richly detailed novel … With characters as rooted in the earth as the trees of the orchard, Dahanu Road springs to life. The fruits of Irani’s labours will surely win him the acclaim he’s enjoyed for his past work.” — WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
“Dahanu Road is the sort of novel book clubs will be drawn to like moths to a porch light for its exotic setting and the love story at its heart. … It’s an intriguing place Irani shows us, a place where old struggles yield beauty and love, as well as death and pain.” — NEW BRUNSWICK TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL
“Anosh Irani moves back and forth through the generations skillfully. His writing is visual and intense, and he creates his flawed characters with humour and compassion as they struggle with changing times and cultural mores, while trying to survive the ghosts of the past. Irani gives us a fascinating and exotic story that takes place within a little known historical context of Iran/Indian history.” — THE CHRONICLE HERALD
“Like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Dahanu Road is a story of forbidden love. Irani writes evocatively in a tale that has humour and texture as well as pathos.” — ELLE CANADA
“Irani’s writing seems to capture the heat of an Indian summer. As he delivers a tragic love story, he also writes about peoples unfamiliar to most Canadians, telling of class differences and connection to the land. Anosh Irani is one of the best young writers in Canada.” — UPTOWN MAGAZINE
“Anosh Irani does for Iranis what Rohinton Mistry did for Parsis.” — THE SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA
“Dahanu Road has much in common with Rohinton Mistry’s Giller-Prize winning A Fine Balance … Irani unravels convoluted history and class division to lay bare a grand narrative … The pages are saturated with rich detail. The smells, vistas, religious rituals, and rhythms of nature on the road are key to the narrative’s power.” — HERENB.COM
“Author Anosh Irani provides us with a unique blend of fact and fiction, interspersing village life with realities of Irani history. A heart-wrenching chronicle of love and loss, Dahanu Road is one man's search for truth in a sea of deception.” — THE TIMES OF INDIA
“The soul-searching journey of three generations of Iranis is blended into a heart-warming story…The author portrays [an] unlikely yet compelling romance between a young Irani man and an even younger Warli woman with an exquisite touch. The beauty and purity of their love lingers even when it is violently truncated…The stories of generations as well as of individuals unfold on a sweeping scale, intertwining and coming full circle.” — THE DECCAN HERALD
“Exquisitely plotted, researched and written … a story of intertwined destinies and uncomfortable class divisions crafted in an unapologetic voice.” — MINT LOUNGE, INDIA
“… not to be missed …” — ELLE, India
“After a long time, an unputdownable book. A fascinating insight into Dahanu's Irani & Warli communities, written with warmth, honesty and a great deal of humour by a skilled storyteller.” — SOONI TARAPOREVALA, Oscar nominated screenwriter of Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala, and The Namesake
“Dahanu Road is engagingly written and Irani creates a lovable cast of characters.” — MUMBAI BOSS
“[Dahanu Road] goes beyond sepia-tinted nostalgia to depict the savage wrestling for power between landlords and Warli workers…the plot [is] taut and suspenseful…a chronicle of the eccentric members of one of the world’s most exclusive and quickly declining clubs – the Zoroastrian community…Alternately tragic and funny, Dahanu Road doesn’t lose sight of it all.” — TIME OUT, New Delhi
“Anosh Irani's latest offering is a saga of unrelenting tragedy and a tale well told.” — THE CALCUTTA TELEGRAPH
“He paints an intricate and very real picture of dusty Dahanu. So much so that days after I finished the book, my dreams were still of Zairos and Kusum.” — MINT
Praise for Anosh Irani's The Song of Kahunsha
“Irani weaves an intricate web of personal and political relationships… With characters as rooted in the earth as the trees of the orchard, Dahanu Road springs to life. The fruits of Irani's labours will surely win him the acclaim he's enjoyed for his past work.” — WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Praise for Anosh Irani's The Song of Kahunsha
- National Bestseller
- Nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
- A CBC Radio “Canada Reads” Finalist
“A darkly enchanting story of the abandoned children of Bombay. … Irani’s shocking tale unfolds with a macabre and terrifying beauty that is both heartbreaking and compelling.” — WAYSON CHOY, author of All That Matters and The Jade Peony
Praise for Anosh Irani's The Cripple and His Talismans
“A highly imaginative novel, full of humour, poetry and insights, written in a beautiful, spare style. Throughout the narrative looms a great city, Bombay, crazily reflected in the life of one of its inhabitants who, by means baffling, heinous, desperate and often very funny, seeks to embrace the divine with both arms.” — YANN MARTEL, author of Life of Pi