Everything the Light Touches

"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 The Lost Words and 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 Gun Island
"Janice 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, author of the 2020 Booker Prize-shortlisted Burnt Sugar
"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: Stories
"Ingenious in its nested structure, treading lightly across centuries and species, Everything the Light Touches tackles every subject from the humble leaf to the mighty empire—then proceeds to ask, with Pariat’s characteristic wit, if we perhaps haven’t got that last bit backwards. An elegant, passionate book (which doubles as a warning) about the impossibility of understanding a single thing about the world without first acknowledging the wonder and mystery inherent in all that surrounds us." — Madhuri Vijay, author of The Far Field 
"Capacious and wise, Everything The Light Touches is a magnificent reminder that the natural world does not lie outside of ourselves, and that when we break trust with the earth, we break our own spirits into scattered fragments. Janice Pariat finds a new language of connection, wonder, and loss, for the songs of the earth from Lapland and Goethe’s Europe to the Lower Himalayas and remote villages in India's Northeast, her stories dancing between centuries in this generous and intricate work." — Nilanjana S. Roy, author of The Wildings
"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
“Written with a curiosity that jumps across geographies, time, discourses and disciplines, Everything the Light Touches is a gift to those who question the forms and preoccupations of the modern novel.” — Shubhangi Swarup, author of Latitudes of Longing
"A dynamic river is certainly better than a static pond. Because still water stagnates, causes stagnation. It is moving water that carries life; it is motion that personifies life. Janice Pariat's Everything the Light Touches is about motion. As we read the novel, we too travel, meet other travellers. It is a book about the contradictions precipitated by time, space and circumstances. A novel that touched me deeply as a whole as well as with its ease of storytelling." — S. Hareesh, author of Moustache, winner of the JCB Prize for Literature 2020
“Lush and layered. ... There’s an abundance of lush details of northeastern India, and the smooth synthesis of ideas and narrative keeps everything together. This is a feast" — Publishers Weekly
"Ambitious and capacious ... 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