Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? tells the stories of three women, linked in love and tragedy over a span of fifty years, sweeping from the Partition of India and Pakistan to the explosion of Air India flight 182 off the coast of Ireland in 1985. There is Bibi-ji—who steals the heart of her sister’s fiancé and goes with him to Vancouver, where they become pillars of the Sikh community—who is haunted by the subsequent disappearance of her sister during the violence of Partition; her neighbour Leela—trying to get on with the business of living in this new world of opportunity—who feels herself always a half and half, a newcomer struggling to find her way in the colourful desi community of Vancouver; and Nimmo, orphaned by the devastation that engulfed India after Partition, who tries to rebuild her life in Delhi. But for all three, the conflicts of the past re-emerge with shattering results. Rich with Anita Rau Badami’s warmth and humanity, and the daily sights, scents and sounds of both India and Canada, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? also shows the tumultuous effect of the past on new immigrants, and the ways in which memory and myth, the personal and the political, become heartrendingly connected.
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