Asha Thanki's powerful debut novel, A Thousand Times Before, weaves together a complex family saga with the 20th-century history of India and Pakistan. As the novel begins, Ayukta sits down with her wife, Nadya, to address the question of whether to have a child. She confesses she has avoided the conversation, and shares the reason why: the women in her family pass down a tapestry that gives each chosen recipient access to their ancestors' memories.
The narrative delves into her grandmother Amla's peaceful early life as an only child in Karachi, then her devastation when her mother travels to a family wedding in Delhi and is caught up in the riots preceding the 1947 Partition. Arni, the impulsive but talented second daughter of Amla, inherits the tapestry and later immigrates to New York City as a student to build a life in a new, cold country far away from everything she has known. Ayukta speaks, too, of her own struggle to accept the tapestry and its gift, her deep love for the women she comes from, and the magic and burden of their memories. In unspooling their stories, she connects their hardships, their heartbreaking losses, and their enduring courage to her present-day experiences.
Thanki's narrative brims with sensory detail, and she writes evocatively of Amla's loneliness, and the difficulty of bridging the gap caused by distance and new experiences. Evocative, sweeping, and intimate, A Thousand Times Before explores Indian politics, the different ways to love a person, and the complexities of family: what we inherit, what we build for ourselves, and what we choose to keep. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams