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After Love
A haunting novel of love, betrayal and redemption, set in India, Russia and Italy.
Vasu, a young Indian student of architecture, arrives in Moscow in the late 1960s. He falls in love with Anna, an archaeologist and an accomplished cellist, yet his romanticism about the Soviet Union clashes with her experience. He goes back to India to design a village for a co-operative of coffee farmers, but he cannot forget Anna and on his return they marry. Anna wants to leave Moscow but isn’t keen to go to India. They decide to go to Venice where Vasu has been offered a teaching position. In Italy their life unravels when Anna mysteriously disappears without a trace. Years later, Vasu discovers a painful but wonderful truth.
A beautifully written story full of music and emotions that moves with ease across continents, After Love is destined to touch the hearts of readers everywhere.
Vasu, a young Indian student of architecture, arrives in Moscow in the late 1960s. He falls in love with Anna, an archaeologist and an accomplished cellist, yet his romanticism about the Soviet Union clashes with her experience. He goes back to India to design a village for a co-operative of coffee farmers, but he cannot forget Anna and on his return they marry. Anna wants to leave Moscow but isn’t keen to go to India. They decide to go to Venice where Vasu has been offered a teaching position. In Italy their life unravels when Anna mysteriously disappears without a trace. Years later, Vasu discovers a painful but wonderful truth.
A beautifully written story full of music and emotions that moves with ease across continents, After Love is destined to touch the hearts of readers everywhere.
- GenresAustralia
304 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2012
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About the author
Subhash Jaireth
12 books3 followersSubhash Jaireth lives in Canberra. Between 1969 and 1978 he spent nine years in Moscow. He has published three books of poetry: Yashodhara: Six Seasons without You (Wild Peony, 2003), Unfinished Poems for Your Violin (Penguin Australia, 1996) and Before the Bullet Hit Me (Vani Prakashan, 1994, in Hindi). He has published essays, stories and poems in Australian and international magazines. His book To Silence: Three Autobiographies was published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2011. His play To Silence was performed in February 2012 in the Street Theatre in Canberra (http://www.thestreet.org.au/). His novel After Love was released by Transit Lounge in October 2012.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 20, 2016
After Love, by Subhash Jaireth, has a melancholy tone. Traversing Russia, India and Australia, it is a poignant story of cross-cultural love that perhaps was always doomed to fail.
Anna is a Russian archaeologist with a keen love of the cello, while Vaso is an Indian student of architecture. They meet in Moscow in 1960 and fall in love. Both are motherless: Vaso’s mother died in childbirth and he was brought up by his sister JiJee-ma, while the reason for Anna’s mother’s absence is not revealed to her until adolescence. She was brought up by her somewhat sour Aunty Olga, and her father.
Moscow in the 1960s was very different to the way it is now. For those of us in the West, the Cold War images we saw were of dour officials stomping around in the Kremlin, ominous tanks in Red Square, and Evil Bad Guys in James Bond films. If we knew anything about life in the Soviet era, it was that everyday life was full of privations: endless queues to buy consumer goods; bad service in shops and hotels; censorship; surveillance; oppression of dissidents of all kinds including artists, musicians and authors; and hostility to the West. But Vaso seems blithe about all this. Influenced by his Uncle Triple K’s enthusiasm and India’s long tradition of socialism, he is fascinated by Marxism and its ideals. He finds Moscow intellectually and culturally stimulating and he thinks that Anna would be affronted by the overcrowding and poverty in India.
Before long, the disconnect between the couple’s political beliefs becomes evident.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/12/30/af...
Anna is a Russian archaeologist with a keen love of the cello, while Vaso is an Indian student of architecture. They meet in Moscow in 1960 and fall in love. Both are motherless: Vaso’s mother died in childbirth and he was brought up by his sister JiJee-ma, while the reason for Anna’s mother’s absence is not revealed to her until adolescence. She was brought up by her somewhat sour Aunty Olga, and her father.
Moscow in the 1960s was very different to the way it is now. For those of us in the West, the Cold War images we saw were of dour officials stomping around in the Kremlin, ominous tanks in Red Square, and Evil Bad Guys in James Bond films. If we knew anything about life in the Soviet era, it was that everyday life was full of privations: endless queues to buy consumer goods; bad service in shops and hotels; censorship; surveillance; oppression of dissidents of all kinds including artists, musicians and authors; and hostility to the West. But Vaso seems blithe about all this. Influenced by his Uncle Triple K’s enthusiasm and India’s long tradition of socialism, he is fascinated by Marxism and its ideals. He finds Moscow intellectually and culturally stimulating and he thinks that Anna would be affronted by the overcrowding and poverty in India.
Before long, the disconnect between the couple’s political beliefs becomes evident.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/12/30/af...
May 30, 2023
sad but good god i loved it!! so many people and places and things flying past you!!! judging a book by its cover works good sometimes!!
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February 19, 2013Very good, an interesting exploration of the influence and impact of political event on the individuals in the USSR and India. Clearly written with an alternation between the two main characters narrating in the first person. About idealism and pragmatism and "the human condition".
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews