"This soulful, resonant novel explores how travel, discovery, botany and the land unite four seemingly disparate people separated by time and place."
Crossing continents and centuries through four distinct - yet connected - characters, Janice Pariat's Everything the Light Touches casts a captivating, slow-burning, lyrical spell. It’s a story of seekers, voyagers and adventurers. A tale of story-tellers, scientists and thinkers that reveals deep-rooted connections to the earth, and the essentialness of the impulse to move, explore, and transform.
We meet Shai in contemporary India, a lost young woman who travels to a remote rural region and reconnects with her childhood, her country, her sense of who she is, and who she might become. The community she spends time with are soulfully connected to the earth: “Without our land, we are lost”. “The more they try to take it away, the more we will fight. Not because we are its owners, but because we are its caretakers.”
Then there’s Evelyn, a Cambridge-educated scientist in Edwardian England whose story begins aboard a boat bound for India. “Is this the journey’s beginning or its end? Where will it take her? To what will it bring her back? What might she learn? What will she see anew?” As with Shai, Evelyn’s curiosity and quest for knowledge and understanding is palpable. In Evelyn’s case, Goethe’s writings on botany have driven her to explore Himalayan forests.
Talking of whom, slipping back to 1786, we travel around Italy the company of Johann Goethe as he develops his ideas for a work called “The Metamorphosis of Plants”. Meanwhile, a young Swede writes sublime nature-infused poetry throughout his expedition to distant northern wildernesses.
Tender, mesmeric and pulsating with its characters’ longings and distinct ways of seeing and living, this is a beautifully resonant novel.
In this bold and brilliant work from the award-winning author of The Nine-Chambered Heart, journeys across continents and centuries intertwine in a multi-layered saga that unfolds through the lives of four unique characters.
| Primary Genre | Historical Fiction |
| Other Genres: |
Tell Us What Rosie Goodwin’s Books Mean to You and Win a Signed Book Bundle
Closing date: 31/10/2026
In this bold and brilliant work from the award-winning author of The Nine-Chambered Heart, journeys across continents and centuries intertwine in a multi-layered saga that unfolds through the lives of four unique characters. For Shai, lost and drifting, a visit to her hometown in India’s Northeast offers the possibility of new ways of living.
Everything the Light Touches features in the following genres: Historical Fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Narrative theme: Sense of place, Narrative theme: Environmental issues / the natural world, Fiction, General Fiction, Fiction: narrative themes
Paperback, Hardback. £8.99, down from the £9.99 cover price. In Stock.
Everything the Light Touches was written by Janice Pariat and published by The Borough Press an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Everything the Light Touches has 491 pages
£8.99, reduced from £9.99. In Stock.
