“[…] Perhaps most poignantly, though, it will be remembered for the questions it asks about size and scope. How large is the world in which we live? How far do our lives extend? Ray constantly probes the reader with that question in narratives both large and small. The book, which features layered chapters of epic scope that span continents, centuries and generations, always seems as though it is just on the verge of getting ahead of itself. But it succeeds because it masterfully juxtaposes the smallest and the largest of worlds, revealing each one’s perpetual containment within the other.[…]”- Fantastic review from the bookreporter here

“[…] The variegated colors, tastes and textures of Ray’s narrative, as it moves through multiple points of view, lends a powerful sense of context to both the most trivial and the most tragic of human circumstances. Ray treads the fine line between coincidence and contrivance with bravado and finesse.” Kirkus. Please see full review here

“Readers fond of Salman Rushdie’s subcontinental epics should appreciate Ray’s combination of multigenerational saga and historical canvas, taking in the potato famine, the partition of India, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Ray vividly illustrates the sentiment one of his characters puts down in a letter: “We all stand at the same great isthmus in the geography of time. We are all related: Our mortality is our one common nation.” Publishers Weekly. Please see full review here

“No Country is a rousing adventure made up out of the blood and guts and dreams of people on three continents and nearly 150 years of troubled history. […] Kalyan Ray doesn’t just think about these matters splashed across three continents, he sharply dramatized them, avoiding kitch and stock situations, embracing disparate stories to create an epic flow of tribute, celebration and commemoration, making a novel as easy to read as the latest bestseller, with a watermark that announces intelligence and fine prose at your fingertips.” - NPR

“This beautifully-written, intelligent novel probes the nature of family, nation and home - of the loyalties and allegiances which comprise identity itself. The story spans many generations and three continents to weave a panoramic tapestry, the very fabric of how we are all connected. This is a moving and compelling tale.” —Enid Shomer, author of The Twelve Rooms of the Nile

Foreign sales to date: France (Grasset), Italy (Nord)
 

In rural Ireland in 1843, Padraig Aherne leaves behind his best friend, Brendan, and girlfriend, Brigid, and sets off to Dublin to rally for his country’s independence, unaware that Brigid is pregnant with his child. But once he reaches the big city, a dangerous mistake forces him on a ship destined for Calcutta. As the potato famine devastates their home, Brendan escapes with Padraig’s young daughter across the ocean, aboard one of the infamous “coffin ships” headed for America. As two family trees expand, moving towards a disastrous convergence from opposite sides of the world, Padraig’s descendants struggle to define themselves and find their places in the world. From Padraig’s reckless mother, to his precocious daughter Maeve who grows up to run a farm in Vermont, to Robert, a young policeman in British-era Calcutta who grapples with his mixed-blood heritage as an Anglo-Indian, to Billy Swint, a boy driven blind by his anger at his father, these are profoundly sympathetic women and men who transcend their eras and set up home in our hearts.

Kalyan Ray’s family was uprooted from the Ganges Delta (now Bangladesh) through a combination of political upheavals, natural disasters, and poverty. He grew up in Calcutta, and was educated in India and the United States. He is the author of the novel EASTWARDS and has translated several books of contemporary Indian poetry into English. He has lived and taught on four continents, and currently divides his time between the United States and India with his wife, Aparna Sen, the Indian film director.

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kontakt:

Agata Żabowska 

agata@literatura.com.pl