The Book of Everlasting Things: A Novel

"Aanchal Malhotra’s groundbreaking oral histories of the India-Pakistan Partition have already filled two door-stopper nonfiction books and won her much acclaim. With this first novel, she shapes some of her monumental research material into a far-reaching love story about two people who practice the ancient arts of Indian perfumery and Urdu calligraphy. Malhotra’s detailed world-building gives the narrative sensory layers and textured depths. Moving from the early 1900s to the present day, she explores how Partition continues to be a living, breathing catastrophe and how the violence and trauma have been inherited by later generations, no matter where they live now."