A Little Distillery in Nowgong

This fantastical historical novel, narrated by a child yet to be born, traces the lives of three generations of a Parsi family in India beginning in the late 1800s. The narrative follows the Khargat family from the intricacies of village life in the jungles of central India, to the complications of urban life in turbulent pre- and post-independence struggles, to contemporary diasporic realities in the United Kingdom and North America. This beautifully told, engaging novel, by the author of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize finalist The Short, Happy Life of Harry Kumar, humanizes the politics of ethnicity, culture, and colonial rule.

Ashok Mathur is the author of two previous novels, both published by Arsenal: Once Upon an Elephant and The Short, Happy Life of Harry Kumar. He is the Director of the Centre for Innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, BC, Canada.