Fiction – Literary – Historical

RELEASE DATE: 5/2/2023(WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER’S WAREHOUSE)

This epic, sweeping historical novel full of “wondrous complexity spans continents and a century, and reveals how one act of survival can reverberate through generations (Rachel Khong, author ofGoodbye, Vitamin).

In 1898, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labor for the British on the East African Railway. Far from home, Pirbhai commits a brutal act in the name of survival that will haunt him and his family for years to come.

So begins Janika Ozas masterful, richly told epic, where the embers of this desperate act are fanned into flame over four generations, four continents, throughout the twentieth century. Pirbhais children are born in Uganda during the waning days of British colonial rule, and as the country moves toward independence, his granddaughters, three sisters, come of age in a divided nation. Latika is an aspiring journalist, who will put everything on the line for what she believes in; Mayuris ambitions will take her farther away from home than she ever imagined; and fearless Kiya will have to carry the weight of her familys silence and secrets.

In 1972, the entire family is forced to flee under Idi Amins military dictatorship. Pirbhais grandchildren are now scattered across the world, struggling to find their way back to each other. One day a letter arrives with news that makes each generation question how far they are willing to go, and who they are willing to defy, to secure their own place in the world.

A History of Burningis an unforgettable tour de force, an intimate family saga of complicity and resistance, about the stories we share, the ones that remain unspoken, and the eternal search for home.

AUTHOR BIO:

Janika Ozais the winner of the 2022 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction, and the 2020 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Award. She has received support from The Millay Colony, Tin House Summer and Winter Workshops, VONA/Voices of Our Nation, and the One Story Summer Writers’ Conference, and her stories and essays have appeared in publications such asThe Best Small Fictions 2019 Anthology,Catapult,The Adroit Journal, andPrairie Schooner, among others. She lives in Toronto.