Everything the Light Touches

‘A novel like none other’ AMITAV GHOSH ‘A masterpiece’ AVNI DOSHI ‘Wise, funny, touching’ ROBERT MACFARLANE

Winner, Sushila Devi 2023

Winner, Atta Galatta 2023 for Best Fiction

Winner, AutHer Award 2023 for Fiction

Finalist, Tata Live Award for Fiction 2023

Longlisted, 2023 JCB Prize for Literature

Shortlisted, Valley of Words Awards 2023 for English Fiction

A Best Book of 2022 in The New Yorker

Four lives, uniquely linked, in a story that journeys across continents and centuries…

For Shai, lost and drifting, a visit to her hometown in India’s Northeast offers the possibility of new ways of living.

For Evelyn, a Cambridge student, scientific inspiration guides her to the forests of the lower Himalayas and a world she has only read about.

For Johann, a German writer, travelling through Italy inspires him to develop ground-breaking ideas that will cement his place in history.

And for a young Swede, an unwavering curiosity for Earth’s natural wonders takes him on an expedition that will forever alter the way we understand the world around us.

A multi-layered literary saga bringing together people and places that seem, at first, far removed, Everything the Light Touches is a marvellous exploration of our ways of seeing, told through the eyes of four unexpectedly intertwined people.

Janice Pariat is the award-winning author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories, Seahorse: A Novel, and the international bestseller The Nine-Chambered Heart. She lives in India.

‘Wise, funny, touching, wide-ranging, deep-delving; whip-smart dialogue and graceful, paced sentences, thousands upon thousands of them. Written by a novelist with the eye of a poet, and a poet with the narrative powers of a novelist, this is a book that needed to be written, that tells true things, and is entirely its own being’ Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland

‘A novel like none other: Janice Pariat brings vividly to life a conception of plants as beings endowed with a powerful inner vitality’ Amitav Ghosh, author of The Glass Palace

‘Pariat traverses the inherent dignity of life in all its forms and the conflict between doing and being that is alive in all of us. Timely and timeless – a masterpiece and an absolute thrill to read’ Avni Doshi, Booker-shortlisted author of Burnt Dugar

‘A novel of great charm, curiosity and adventure – a passionate call for shaking up the certainties of science and history so as to heed the intuitions and instincts that perhaps only fiction can give voice to’ Anjum Hasan, author of A Day in the Life

‘Everything the Light Touches weaves the timelessness of nature and the urgency of human emotions into an elegiac tale that is evocative, intelligent and deeply thought-provoking. A seminal work by a novelist and a poet at the height of her powers’ Pranay Lal, author of Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent

‘As the reader journeys through this atmospheric and accomplished novel, they discover that the natural world around us is loud enough for those willing to listen, and Pariat has found the language for it’ The Guardian

‘A multi-generational epic’ Cosmopolitan

‘Pariat’s sonorous lyricism is beautiful’ The Daily Mail

‘A marvel of a novel – poignant and poetic’ Woman & Home

‘Lyrical and immersive’ Woman’s Weekly

‘Impressive’ Katherine Mezzacappa