Helium
A Novel
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ISBN10: 162040639X
ISBN13: 9781620406397
Paperback
304 Pages
$16.00
CA$18.00
On 1 November 1984, a day after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination, a nineteen-year-old student, Raj, travels back from a class trip with his mentor, Professor Singh. As the group disembark at Delhi station a mob surrounds the professor, throws a tire over him, douses him in gasoline, and sets him alight.
Years later, after moving to the United States, Raj finds himself compelled to return to India to find his professor's widow, the beautiful and enigmatic Nelly. As the two walk through the misty mountains of Shimla, painful memories emerge, and Raj realizes he must face the truth about his father's role in a genocidal pogrom. But, as they soon discover, the path leads inexorably back to that day at the train station.
In this lyrical and haunting exploration of one of the most shocking moments in the history of the Indian nation, Jaspreet Singh has crafted an affecting and important story of memory, collective silences and personal trauma.
Reviews
Praise for Helium
"A tour de force." —The Globe and Mail
"An indictment of the terrrible events of November, 1984, the book teases out the complicated intersection of family, love, politics, and hate, and how one man confronts the responsibility and guilt of one of the worst times in his nation's history." —Publishers Weekly
"A poignant and devastating depiction of how silencing fails to annul complicity." —Daphne Marlatt
"In Helium, Jaspreet Singh evokes, with striking images and prose that honours W.G. Sebald, Orhan Pamuk, and Primo Levi, the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India. It is a feat of chemistry, but also of alchemy, for Singh transforms the seemingly ineffable—the enduring chaos engendered by mob violence—into a work of fiction both beguiling and lyrical." —Taras Grescoe
"Singh illuminates a horrific event: the systematic genocide of minority Sikhs in November 1984 . . . [A] brutally honest indictment of an often glossed-over episode in India's long history." —Booklist