** The phenomenal Indian bestseller ** **Winner of the Tata Lit Live Best First Book of the Year Award ** 'Intense, lyrical, and powerful. This is a remarkable debut' Jeet Thayil, author of Narcopolis and The Book of Chocolate Saints 'Latitudes of Longing is a book to be savoured' The Hindu 'Bold and imaginative' India Today A prizewinning literary epic of the subcontinent, for readers of Yaa Gyasi's HOMEGOING and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's HALF OF A YELLOW SUN In the feverish tropics of the Andaman Islands, a young botanist tends to a fragile rose he has imported to welcome his bride. Hoping their marriage will bloom in this strange life, hundreds of miles from the east coast of India, he is entranced by Chanda Devi's fierce nature and unusual gifts; speaking to trees and the ghosts of former colonialists. These islands, she tells her adoring husband, rest on a faultline, cracked so deep into the earth that spirits cross the boundary freely. But it is not this fracture that t