Everything the Light Touches: A Novel [Paperback]

A Best Book of the Year in The New Yorker • Winner, Sushila Devi Award 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

“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 ofThe Lost WordsandUnderland

One of the most acclaimed and revered writers of her generation returns with her most ambitious novel yet—an elegant, multi-layered work, rich in imagination and exquisitely told, that interweaves a quartet of journeys across continents and centuries.

As emotionally resonant as Kiran Desai’sThe Inheritance of Loss, as inspired as Anthony Doerr’sCloud Cuckoo Land, as inventive as Louisa Hall’sSpeak,and as visionary as David Mitchell’sCloud Atlas, Everything the Light Touchesis Janice Pariat’s magnificent epic of travelers, of discovery, of time, of science, of human connection, and of the impermanent nature of the universe and life itself—a bold and brilliant saga that unfolds through the adventures and experiences of four intriguing characters.

Shai is a young woman in modern India. Lost and drifting, she travels to her country’s Northeast and rediscovers, through her encounters with indigenous communities, ways of being that realign and renew her.

Evelyn is a student of science in Edwardian England. Inspired by Goethe’s botanical wl³ø