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Calul de lut
Sara, studentă la o universitate din Marea Britanie, își spune povestea, regândind anii copilăriei trăiți în India natală, marcați de pierderea tatălui și de exilul lui Elango, olarul care o inițiază în tainele meșteșugului moștenit din generație în generație. Calul în flăcări, visat de Elango într-o noapte, devine calul de lut, mărturie a unei iubiri interzise ce anulează echilibrul precar al comunității în care trăiesc. Romanul propune o călătorie în timp și spațiu, alături de personaje ale căror vieți aduc în prim-plan suferința, iubirea, vinovăția, actul artistic. Pendulând între prezent și trecut, între două continente, Calul de lut este un roman-evantai, ce oferă multiple paliere de interpretare a călătoriilor identitare țesute în jurul traumei și pierderii, dar și a condiției artistului într-o lume în care puterii cathartice a artei i se opune intoleranța religioasă. Cartea mai spune o poveste – cea a lui Chinna, câinele care unește oameni și destine.
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 9, 2021
62 people are currently reading
3626 people want to read
About the author
Anuradha Roy
16 books535 followersAnuradha Roy was educated in Hyderabad, Calcutta and Cambridge (UK). She is an editor at Permanent Black, an independent press publishing in South Asian history, politics and culture. She lives mainly in Ranikhet, India, with her husband Rukun Advani and their dog, Biscoot.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 141 reviews
September 15, 2021
My first Anuradha Roy and I am in awe with her writing style. The Earthspinner is Anuradha Roy's latest release which according to me is the epitome of Literary Fiction. The book flips through and forth India & England.
This is the story of Elango, a potter from Southern India who narrates various stories and life teachings to Sara and her sister. Sara soon moves to England to study and rekindles with her old passion of Pottery. More than the story, it's the authors writing style that makes The Earthspinner a beautiful and well crafted book.
The book is soothing. I liked the concept of a terracotta horse and how it was engraved into the story. It was so heartwarming to see Sara's character development across letters and how it's all about she finding her passion and following it. It's about Love, Finding one's passion, Belonging, Life and much more.
The concept of Love and belonging was very well depicted through Elango and Zohra's story. Chinna, the dog's letters were also so pleasant to read about. I would call this a comfort read for me with characters you would love to read about and the story you wouldn't wanna miss.
This is the story of Elango, a potter from Southern India who narrates various stories and life teachings to Sara and her sister. Sara soon moves to England to study and rekindles with her old passion of Pottery. More than the story, it's the authors writing style that makes The Earthspinner a beautiful and well crafted book.
The book is soothing. I liked the concept of a terracotta horse and how it was engraved into the story. It was so heartwarming to see Sara's character development across letters and how it's all about she finding her passion and following it. It's about Love, Finding one's passion, Belonging, Life and much more.
The concept of Love and belonging was very well depicted through Elango and Zohra's story. Chinna, the dog's letters were also so pleasant to read about. I would call this a comfort read for me with characters you would love to read about and the story you wouldn't wanna miss.
January 20, 2024
”A horse was in flames. It roamed beneath the ocean breathing fire and when it shook its mane the flames coloured the waves red and when it erupted from the water it was a tall as a tree and the fire made the crackling sound of paper.”
This is the vision of a dream that awakens Elango in a pool of sweat. Always at 3.ooam, the time of day where only worriers and petty thieves are awake. Or potters, such as Elango. The dream unsettles him, as he’s well aware of the myth of the Trojan horse, and all the heartache that entailed.
Elango comes from generations of potters before him and continues this craft, using old school methods. Fishing from mud at the river at the edge of the forest, to procure the clay to create his creations. His earthenware ranges from water urns and dishes for the local villagers, to larger works that sit proudly in hotel lobbies. After his dream, he knows he must create a terracotta horse. It will be his greatest work, as this is symbolic of the love he has for Zohra.
For like Romeo & Juliet, Elango & Zohra’s love cannot be. From different religions, it is forbidden and unthinkable.
A brutal highway robbery leaves its victims with both physical and long standing emotional scars, the man brutally beaten and nearly losing an eye, the woman sexually assaulted. She blames herself as she insisted her husband stop the car for a moment to allow their six month old puppy to relieve itself. She never overcomes the guilt at the loss of their pet, and over the years will continue to look for him. Returning repeatedly to the streets near where the attack took place.
”I will never give up looking for my Tashi. You can be sure of that.”
She writes to any “Agony Aunt” at the local paper, as she has no other outlet for the distress she feels at what happened, and she tries to make sense of the senseless cruelty of the men who turned their lives upside down.
”And we lost our dog. I don’t know where he is, alive or dead. If he has food or people who care for him. I published an advertisement, begged the police to find him, but so far there is no news.”
In a twist of fate, Elango hears a rustle in the bushes and a whimper when he goes to the forest to cut trees for some kindling, near where he collects clay for his works.
”The guard on his rounds? A dacoit? A forest god disturbed at his wood being cut?...Seeing some movement he gripped his axe tighter. It was a dog. A young dog had stopped in its tracks. When Elango took a step towards it, its curly tail wagged.”
A puppy! Finally Elango has hope and something to love. He takes the puppy home, naming him Chinna. Despite harsh words from his brother and sister-in-law about the troubles a puppy brings, Elango stands firm and keeps him. To him Chinna is a good luck charm, as he found him at the same time he decided to create a giant terracotta horse for Zohra.
A family with two young girls - Tia and Sara - hear of the brutal carjacking, as their Mum is a journalist at the local newspaper. They do not pay too much attention, as they’re too young to understand such baseless violence. Little do they know that the puppy that they fall in love with (that Elango has brought for them to look after a few hours each day while he works), is one and the same dog.
But their Mum, being not only a journalist who has covered the crime of the carjacking and doubles as the “Agony Aunt” at the paper, is fully aware of exactly where Chinna has come from. I have to admit to feeling dismayed that she did not return Chinna (previously Tashi) to his original owners, as to me, that would be the right thing to do. So it’s an interesting insight into what people are willing to overlook for their own, or their family’s happiness.
Fast forward to five years later, and Sara wins a scholarship to go to University in England. She feels lonely and isolated, as the funds received are barely enough to cover her food and textbooks. She does, however, have unlimited access to the pottery studio in the basement of a Church near her college. This is where she unwinds and thinks back on her childhood, when she first learnt about pottery, through her family friend Elango.
And it’s through her reminiscences that we hear the complete story of Elango, Zohra and Chinna.
Caste, religion, myth. Prying neighbours and years of political unrest between different sides of the same argument. Set in India (then alternating with England) from the mid 1970s to the 1980s, this book shows how our actions can have long reaching consequences. How we are influenced by our culture and upbringing, and that we carry this around with us, wherever we end up on the globe. It is an intrinsic part of us. And how incredibly scary mob rule and fanaticism is.
I loved the descriptions of the spinning wheel as the clay is thrown onto it to begin to breathe life into something new. How for Elango and Sara (and a friend of hers at College, Karin) working with clay is an outlet for all manner of emotions.
I was talking with my dear friend Neale about this book, as Anuradha Roy’s writing style put me in mind of Elif Shafak. That same powerful yet subtle way of managing to hold so much emotion in the words on the page. You feel like you are there with them.
And oh the ending! Have your tissues ready, as it’s told via the viewpoint of Chinna. Now an elder statesman, with a snout of white whiskers, still proudly doing his daily rounds of the village square, albeit a bit more slowly. It is quite simply, perfect.
My rambling musings do this incredible book no justice at all. It is the most stunning book, and one you will never forget. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
*** All the stars ***
”...this was what people called destiny. Best to embrace it and be grateful. Mysterious things happen in this world, we cannot know it all."
This is the vision of a dream that awakens Elango in a pool of sweat. Always at 3.ooam, the time of day where only worriers and petty thieves are awake. Or potters, such as Elango. The dream unsettles him, as he’s well aware of the myth of the Trojan horse, and all the heartache that entailed.
Elango comes from generations of potters before him and continues this craft, using old school methods. Fishing from mud at the river at the edge of the forest, to procure the clay to create his creations. His earthenware ranges from water urns and dishes for the local villagers, to larger works that sit proudly in hotel lobbies. After his dream, he knows he must create a terracotta horse. It will be his greatest work, as this is symbolic of the love he has for Zohra.
For like Romeo & Juliet, Elango & Zohra’s love cannot be. From different religions, it is forbidden and unthinkable.
A brutal highway robbery leaves its victims with both physical and long standing emotional scars, the man brutally beaten and nearly losing an eye, the woman sexually assaulted. She blames herself as she insisted her husband stop the car for a moment to allow their six month old puppy to relieve itself. She never overcomes the guilt at the loss of their pet, and over the years will continue to look for him. Returning repeatedly to the streets near where the attack took place.
”I will never give up looking for my Tashi. You can be sure of that.”
She writes to any “Agony Aunt” at the local paper, as she has no other outlet for the distress she feels at what happened, and she tries to make sense of the senseless cruelty of the men who turned their lives upside down.
”And we lost our dog. I don’t know where he is, alive or dead. If he has food or people who care for him. I published an advertisement, begged the police to find him, but so far there is no news.”
In a twist of fate, Elango hears a rustle in the bushes and a whimper when he goes to the forest to cut trees for some kindling, near where he collects clay for his works.
”The guard on his rounds? A dacoit? A forest god disturbed at his wood being cut?...Seeing some movement he gripped his axe tighter. It was a dog. A young dog had stopped in its tracks. When Elango took a step towards it, its curly tail wagged.”
A puppy! Finally Elango has hope and something to love. He takes the puppy home, naming him Chinna. Despite harsh words from his brother and sister-in-law about the troubles a puppy brings, Elango stands firm and keeps him. To him Chinna is a good luck charm, as he found him at the same time he decided to create a giant terracotta horse for Zohra.
A family with two young girls - Tia and Sara - hear of the brutal carjacking, as their Mum is a journalist at the local newspaper. They do not pay too much attention, as they’re too young to understand such baseless violence. Little do they know that the puppy that they fall in love with (that Elango has brought for them to look after a few hours each day while he works), is one and the same dog.
But their Mum, being not only a journalist who has covered the crime of the carjacking and doubles as the “Agony Aunt” at the paper, is fully aware of exactly where Chinna has come from. I have to admit to feeling dismayed that she did not return Chinna (previously Tashi) to his original owners, as to me, that would be the right thing to do. So it’s an interesting insight into what people are willing to overlook for their own, or their family’s happiness.
Fast forward to five years later, and Sara wins a scholarship to go to University in England. She feels lonely and isolated, as the funds received are barely enough to cover her food and textbooks. She does, however, have unlimited access to the pottery studio in the basement of a Church near her college. This is where she unwinds and thinks back on her childhood, when she first learnt about pottery, through her family friend Elango.
And it’s through her reminiscences that we hear the complete story of Elango, Zohra and Chinna.
Caste, religion, myth. Prying neighbours and years of political unrest between different sides of the same argument. Set in India (then alternating with England) from the mid 1970s to the 1980s, this book shows how our actions can have long reaching consequences. How we are influenced by our culture and upbringing, and that we carry this around with us, wherever we end up on the globe. It is an intrinsic part of us. And how incredibly scary mob rule and fanaticism is.
I loved the descriptions of the spinning wheel as the clay is thrown onto it to begin to breathe life into something new. How for Elango and Sara (and a friend of hers at College, Karin) working with clay is an outlet for all manner of emotions.
I was talking with my dear friend Neale about this book, as Anuradha Roy’s writing style put me in mind of Elif Shafak. That same powerful yet subtle way of managing to hold so much emotion in the words on the page. You feel like you are there with them.
And oh the ending! Have your tissues ready, as it’s told via the viewpoint of Chinna. Now an elder statesman, with a snout of white whiskers, still proudly doing his daily rounds of the village square, albeit a bit more slowly. It is quite simply, perfect.
My rambling musings do this incredible book no justice at all. It is the most stunning book, and one you will never forget. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
*** All the stars ***
”...this was what people called destiny. Best to embrace it and be grateful. Mysterious things happen in this world, we cannot know it all."
January 28, 2023
“The cold was bracing instead of numbing, the darkness promised long hours of warmth and reading.”
The quote is there because I liked it, not because it’s relevant!
A novel of pottery, passion and prejudice (not forgetting the dog Chinna, who is the real star). That’s enough of the naff straplines.
The novel follows Sarayu from about eleven when she is living with her family in India, until she is about twenty at university in Cambridge.
The focus of the novel is her relationship with Elango. He drives an autorickshaw, taking Sara and her sister to school. He is also a potter (hence the title) and he teaches Sara how to be a potter, something that stays with her. Elango falls in love with Zohra: he is Hindu, she is Muslim and some members of the community are very unhappy as a result. Elango has a dream, to make a large pot horse and the central part of the story is the making of the horse. It is told partly in the present (early 1980s I think) and partly by flashback. The character of the dog (Chinna) is well drawn and symbolically important:
“..more than my first pot, or anything else that took place in the world, what changed the configuration of earth-sun-sky in that year of unimaginable wonders and bloodcurdling horrors was the young dog that Elango found in a forest.”
There is a focus on myth, memory, family and history, but the prejudices of the political situation intrude. There is a rather effective build-up of detail and some interesting reflections on the creative process. Pottery is obviously a metaphor for change, growth and regeneration. Creation and destruction are linked. However it is the dog that crosses easily the social and religious barriers and the one who loves unconditionally.
Roy has also reflected on the role of the artist in an interview:
“I didn’t think about the “role of the artist” when I was writing my first book, but over the years it has become clearer to me how tangled the process of making anything is. Not only must the writer or artist mine the force of her imagination – her personal seam of ideas and images – and then do what it takes to turn them into books or pictures or films; the outer world intrudes and alters the shape of things, too. This doesn’t have only to do with time and space and family. In The Earthspinner, the potter finds that he has to overcome not just his self-doubt and his lack of material supplies; his dream of making a clay horse runs full tilt into the hostility of his community. The threat of the mob is something every artist now faces, anywhere in the world, and all of this together is fascinating to me: how people continue to create despite everything, including their own senses of themselves.”
I enjoyed this and felt Roy made her points with a fairly light touch.
The quote is there because I liked it, not because it’s relevant!
A novel of pottery, passion and prejudice (not forgetting the dog Chinna, who is the real star). That’s enough of the naff straplines.
The novel follows Sarayu from about eleven when she is living with her family in India, until she is about twenty at university in Cambridge.
The focus of the novel is her relationship with Elango. He drives an autorickshaw, taking Sara and her sister to school. He is also a potter (hence the title) and he teaches Sara how to be a potter, something that stays with her. Elango falls in love with Zohra: he is Hindu, she is Muslim and some members of the community are very unhappy as a result. Elango has a dream, to make a large pot horse and the central part of the story is the making of the horse. It is told partly in the present (early 1980s I think) and partly by flashback. The character of the dog (Chinna) is well drawn and symbolically important:
“..more than my first pot, or anything else that took place in the world, what changed the configuration of earth-sun-sky in that year of unimaginable wonders and bloodcurdling horrors was the young dog that Elango found in a forest.”
There is a focus on myth, memory, family and history, but the prejudices of the political situation intrude. There is a rather effective build-up of detail and some interesting reflections on the creative process. Pottery is obviously a metaphor for change, growth and regeneration. Creation and destruction are linked. However it is the dog that crosses easily the social and religious barriers and the one who loves unconditionally.
Roy has also reflected on the role of the artist in an interview:
“I didn’t think about the “role of the artist” when I was writing my first book, but over the years it has become clearer to me how tangled the process of making anything is. Not only must the writer or artist mine the force of her imagination – her personal seam of ideas and images – and then do what it takes to turn them into books or pictures or films; the outer world intrudes and alters the shape of things, too. This doesn’t have only to do with time and space and family. In The Earthspinner, the potter finds that he has to overcome not just his self-doubt and his lack of material supplies; his dream of making a clay horse runs full tilt into the hostility of his community. The threat of the mob is something every artist now faces, anywhere in the world, and all of this together is fascinating to me: how people continue to create despite everything, including their own senses of themselves.”
I enjoyed this and felt Roy made her points with a fairly light touch.
October 25, 2023
Cartea asta este o plăcere, este plină de descrieri, îți lasă impresia de parcă ai citi un poem in proză. Este o carte a iubirii, de fapt sunt multe iubiri pe care cititorul le va descoperi.Te face să cunoști India așa cum este ea, fără să fi călătorit vreodată acolo, o lume inaccesibilă multora dintre noi, dar cu ajutorul cărților câte lumi nu ajungem să cunoaștem, acesta fiind unul din marile merite aduse cititului.
October 28, 2021
2.5 stars.
“Things of this kind happen all over the world, every hour, perhaps every minute, more in some places than in others. The variations are infinite, and the particulars matter only to the people whose lives they touch.”
Have you ever felt absolutely nothing after finishing up a book? Like nothing at all? Because genuinely I have nothing, not even the remotest feeling or opinion in my heart (or in my head) about this book. I cannot for the life of me, decide whether I enjoyed this 200 page novel or not. This is in no way a criticism of the book; objectively, nothing is wrong with it. Anuradha Roy is a very talented writer and this book is well written as well as beautifully narrated and yet…
So I have no idea how to write this review. The problem here is that I have nothing to say, either about the book itself or my reading experience of it. Now that I think of it, I feel like I read the whole book in a trance but with the complete awareness of what I was reading, when I was reading it and how often I took breaks in between. What is absent is the knowledge of my own feelings while reading and I think that’s the fault of waiting for a day or two before sitting down to write a review. Anyway, atleast let me tell you in my own words, what the book is actually about;
We follow Elango, a Hindu potter who falls in love with a Muslim girl from the neighborhood. One night, he dreams of a horse in flames riding the tides of the ocean and takes it upon himself to construct it in the name of his lover Zohra. And also there’s a dog and an Indian girl who is studying in England involved somehow.
I am fully aware that this isn’t in any way, a very insightful or even remotely constructive review but this is all I have.
“Things of this kind happen all over the world, every hour, perhaps every minute, more in some places than in others. The variations are infinite, and the particulars matter only to the people whose lives they touch.”
Have you ever felt absolutely nothing after finishing up a book? Like nothing at all? Because genuinely I have nothing, not even the remotest feeling or opinion in my heart (or in my head) about this book. I cannot for the life of me, decide whether I enjoyed this 200 page novel or not. This is in no way a criticism of the book; objectively, nothing is wrong with it. Anuradha Roy is a very talented writer and this book is well written as well as beautifully narrated and yet…
So I have no idea how to write this review. The problem here is that I have nothing to say, either about the book itself or my reading experience of it. Now that I think of it, I feel like I read the whole book in a trance but with the complete awareness of what I was reading, when I was reading it and how often I took breaks in between. What is absent is the knowledge of my own feelings while reading and I think that’s the fault of waiting for a day or two before sitting down to write a review. Anyway, atleast let me tell you in my own words, what the book is actually about;
We follow Elango, a Hindu potter who falls in love with a Muslim girl from the neighborhood. One night, he dreams of a horse in flames riding the tides of the ocean and takes it upon himself to construct it in the name of his lover Zohra. And also there’s a dog and an Indian girl who is studying in England involved somehow.
I am fully aware that this isn’t in any way, a very insightful or even remotely constructive review but this is all I have.
July 29, 2022
I don't know why every story written by the author has explicit rape scenes out of nowhere. That too of a character unrelated. By totally unrelated characters.
This is my last straw. I am giving up on this author.
Just not for me.
DNFed 30 pages in. So try the book for yourself and not for my opinion.
This is my last straw. I am giving up on this author.
Just not for me.
DNFed 30 pages in. So try the book for yourself and not for my opinion.
November 23, 2021
We are vessels of desire. We are conditioned to believe that who we are, the vessel that we are, is enough to hold all the desire that bubbles inside us, that we can live out this cosmic blink of a life by bottling it all up, by even refusing to acknowledge the existence of desire, only for the vessel to explode many times through out this short and long life, and to send us on a quest for more vessels to pour that desire. We turn to art. We pour it into colours, printed symbols, sounds. We turn to other sentient beings. We pour it into another human, a nonhuman animal, a tree. We are bottomless, and our desire keeps rising. Sometimes, we realise that we have a choice — our desire doesn’t have to be hidden; it can flow freely. Most times, we are robbed of our choices — our desire is crushed; it appears disgusting to an onlooker. It’s axed down. However, desire is like that heroic little plant that grows from concrete. So long as we exist, we continue to be vessels of desire, regardless of how many ever times it is snuffed. Even if it is put in a mare’s mouth and sent to the unimaginable depths of the ocean.
The characters — Chinna the dog, Elango the potter, Sarayu the chronicler, Usman Alam the blind calligrapher, Devika the reporter, Raghav the geologist, even Mrs Khambatta the neighbour who recites a poem to a dog — together, make a kaleidoscope of a story in Anuradha Roy’s ‘The Earthspinner’. They are so broken, so whole, always leaning toward light, lapping it all up with a reverence for life. As the story continues to spin, they come together to make heartbreaking designs and patterns, and show the price that humans pay to love, to create, and to live in peace. They have been touched by loss and grief, and their lives as her potter’s wheel, Anuradha Roy throws stories which travel from an almost village in Deccan Plateau to England, exploring myths, allegories, desire, communal hate (even in the 70’s, the expression ‘go back to Pakistan’ was in use), harmony, limitless longing, and answers the questions of why and how human spirit is indomitable.
The stories zoom out when Sarayu writes about her life in England, and it zooms in when it shifts to Kummarapet, showing fractals after fractals, of lives which are seemingly still on the surface, with bloodcurdling horror throbbing underneath. If the branches of stories are removed, layer after layer, they can still stand as complete stories — a lost dog, a Hindu man falls in love with a Muslim woman, a girl is uprooted from everything that defines her, a myth about a horse… Anuradha Roy deftly weaves their lives together and shows how they are all interconnected. A butterfly lands on a girl’s cheek, igniting a creative spark that can never be extinguished. Not chaos, but shared existence. Among other things which are common among them, displacement is pivotal. Displacement that is unique and universal. When they all lose perspective, when they all have zoomed in too much, a geologist talks about this ancient planet, about how the plates are always shifting, and about the very earth that Elango uses to make his terracotta horse.
Stories, in which only one character knows a life-changing truth and the reader is privy to that, make me weep. I bear witness to all the suffering that the characters endure, and I hold the power to change their lives, but I stay stripped of my agency, I watch them make irreversibly wrong decisions, pining for lost opportunities, and walking lost in the labyrinth laid by circumstances. It’s even more devastating when even after the end, it’s just the other character and me who are in possession of the truth that will break hearts for many and reinstate faith for some. Maybe that is why it’s hard to start reading the next book after reading some books. I need some space and time to grieve, to let go of the could-have-been.
I will remember this novel for the sense of wonder it stirred in me, and for Anuradha Roy’s breathtaking writing, storytelling, and imagination. A blurb on the cover reads, ‘This is why you read fiction at all.’ This is truly why you read fiction like ‘The Earthspinner’. To feel human. To feel alive. To share loss and desire and longing and grief. To be comforted by stories. To be reminded of life’s brevity. To learn about ways to live it. To choose to live it in our own ways.
Murthy, gnarled with the weight of learning, wagging a futile finger at the lust-filled boys in the class and telling them how Lord Shiva’s passions had begun burning up the universe. To calm him and to save the earth, the gods placed his fires in a mare’s mouth, then took the mare to the ocean. Under the water the mare burns quietly still, Murthy had said, it shifts and moves with the waves, it turns on its side and drifts toward the ice caps slowly consuming the ocean, waiting for doomsday, when it will be released during the final deluge.
The characters — Chinna the dog, Elango the potter, Sarayu the chronicler, Usman Alam the blind calligrapher, Devika the reporter, Raghav the geologist, even Mrs Khambatta the neighbour who recites a poem to a dog — together, make a kaleidoscope of a story in Anuradha Roy’s ‘The Earthspinner’. They are so broken, so whole, always leaning toward light, lapping it all up with a reverence for life. As the story continues to spin, they come together to make heartbreaking designs and patterns, and show the price that humans pay to love, to create, and to live in peace. They have been touched by loss and grief, and their lives as her potter’s wheel, Anuradha Roy throws stories which travel from an almost village in Deccan Plateau to England, exploring myths, allegories, desire, communal hate (even in the 70’s, the expression ‘go back to Pakistan’ was in use), harmony, limitless longing, and answers the questions of why and how human spirit is indomitable.
The stories zoom out when Sarayu writes about her life in England, and it zooms in when it shifts to Kummarapet, showing fractals after fractals, of lives which are seemingly still on the surface, with bloodcurdling horror throbbing underneath. If the branches of stories are removed, layer after layer, they can still stand as complete stories — a lost dog, a Hindu man falls in love with a Muslim woman, a girl is uprooted from everything that defines her, a myth about a horse… Anuradha Roy deftly weaves their lives together and shows how they are all interconnected. A butterfly lands on a girl’s cheek, igniting a creative spark that can never be extinguished. Not chaos, but shared existence. Among other things which are common among them, displacement is pivotal. Displacement that is unique and universal. When they all lose perspective, when they all have zoomed in too much, a geologist talks about this ancient planet, about how the plates are always shifting, and about the very earth that Elango uses to make his terracotta horse.
My father would have said change was the work of the earth spinning, spinning as it always had.
Stories, in which only one character knows a life-changing truth and the reader is privy to that, make me weep. I bear witness to all the suffering that the characters endure, and I hold the power to change their lives, but I stay stripped of my agency, I watch them make irreversibly wrong decisions, pining for lost opportunities, and walking lost in the labyrinth laid by circumstances. It’s even more devastating when even after the end, it’s just the other character and me who are in possession of the truth that will break hearts for many and reinstate faith for some. Maybe that is why it’s hard to start reading the next book after reading some books. I need some space and time to grieve, to let go of the could-have-been.
I will remember this novel for the sense of wonder it stirred in me, and for Anuradha Roy’s breathtaking writing, storytelling, and imagination. A blurb on the cover reads, ‘This is why you read fiction at all.’ This is truly why you read fiction like ‘The Earthspinner’. To feel human. To feel alive. To share loss and desire and longing and grief. To be comforted by stories. To be reminded of life’s brevity. To learn about ways to live it. To choose to live it in our own ways.
August 29, 2022
4.5, round up
Excellent.
Excellent.
September 19, 2023
I am a fan of Anuradha Roy books and end up giving those 4 to 5 stars. But this one didn't strike a chord with me. Somehow it felt disjointed and boring .
Though the subject of pottery, loneliness, staying far away from home to study , were all appealing ... Somehow the characters or story on the whole didn't gell.
Though the subject of pottery, loneliness, staying far away from home to study , were all appealing ... Somehow the characters or story on the whole didn't gell.
July 31, 2022
This read has a restrained, subtle tone. And it feels almost contemplative, as a young college-age woman reflects on her childhood and a traumatic event with a Hindu man who fell in love with a Muslim woman.
I was expecting Roy's usual sweeping and obviously gorgeous writing. But here, she uses a more measured approach. The book is just over 200 pages and thus pretty short but she uses careful and thoughtful pacing. And that makes the read feel more rounded, more involved.
I didn't like the bookends structure, i.e., college in England, childhood in India, then back to college in England. And I'm often not fond of journal or diary entries which reflect Sara's college years. But I do see how that format tells the story. I will admit that I wanted more to read. But the book, as written, has a "complete" feel. And the resolution is understandable.
There were many beautiful passages (but as I said, it wasn't what I've come to expect and I've read all her 4 previous titles). Here Anuradha Roy seems to have pulled back some which is consistent with the tone of this book.
...He and I have met here as two people who can dimly glimpse each other across a river of years and when he speaks to me of his own past he makes it a story that is as far-fetched as myth and intimate as a love letter....
I was expecting Roy's usual sweeping and obviously gorgeous writing. But here, she uses a more measured approach. The book is just over 200 pages and thus pretty short but she uses careful and thoughtful pacing. And that makes the read feel more rounded, more involved.
I didn't like the bookends structure, i.e., college in England, childhood in India, then back to college in England. And I'm often not fond of journal or diary entries which reflect Sara's college years. But I do see how that format tells the story. I will admit that I wanted more to read. But the book, as written, has a "complete" feel. And the resolution is understandable.
There were many beautiful passages (but as I said, it wasn't what I've come to expect and I've read all her 4 previous titles). Here Anuradha Roy seems to have pulled back some which is consistent with the tone of this book.
...He and I have met here as two people who can dimly glimpse each other across a river of years and when he speaks to me of his own past he makes it a story that is as far-fetched as myth and intimate as a love letter....
Read
September 29, 2021The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy is as beautiful in its prose as it is on the outside, an array of colours and fire in just the right places to highlight the magnificent contours of the terracotta horse, around which the novel loosely revolves.
We meet Sara through journal entries of her empty days in England, longing for home and her recently deceased father. Sitting in a pottery studio, she recounts about her passion for the craft she learnt through Elango, an autorickshaw driver by the day who used to ferry her and her sister to and from school, but a potter by heart, who taught her the patient art of working with earth and clay in his shed near a Moringa Tree.
As she confronts the bitter sweet memories of her past, she thinks of Elango and his dream of a burning terracotta horse under water, Chinna, the dog Elango mysteriously finds in the forest (or was it the other way round?) who is instantly loved by all. She thinks of where things went wrong, was it when Elango fell in love with Zohra, a girl from another religion or was it ‘Akka’, who knowingly spewed hate on grounds of religion and jealousy, spreading faster than the fire that transforms the soft clay to its hardened form.
I loved the writing and how it holds the several themes together; longing, home, superstition, religion and a deep longing for the craft. Roy’s writing has an incredible charm that pulls you in as it pulls the reigns of her characters and the passion that drives them, be it love or a search for themselves.
Another thing that stood out for me is how these different stories develop independently of each other, even though one sets the other in motion and I thought it was wonderfully done.
My only qualm with the book was that it left more loose ends in terms of completion, that frayed into existence like a letter that ends abruptly and left me wanting for more when I flipped the last page.
But I really liked it and recommend it for Roy’s writing, her incredible craft of writing about ordinary moments with a beautiful ease and the memorable characters that leave their mark on us!
We meet Sara through journal entries of her empty days in England, longing for home and her recently deceased father. Sitting in a pottery studio, she recounts about her passion for the craft she learnt through Elango, an autorickshaw driver by the day who used to ferry her and her sister to and from school, but a potter by heart, who taught her the patient art of working with earth and clay in his shed near a Moringa Tree.
As she confronts the bitter sweet memories of her past, she thinks of Elango and his dream of a burning terracotta horse under water, Chinna, the dog Elango mysteriously finds in the forest (or was it the other way round?) who is instantly loved by all. She thinks of where things went wrong, was it when Elango fell in love with Zohra, a girl from another religion or was it ‘Akka’, who knowingly spewed hate on grounds of religion and jealousy, spreading faster than the fire that transforms the soft clay to its hardened form.
I loved the writing and how it holds the several themes together; longing, home, superstition, religion and a deep longing for the craft. Roy’s writing has an incredible charm that pulls you in as it pulls the reigns of her characters and the passion that drives them, be it love or a search for themselves.
Another thing that stood out for me is how these different stories develop independently of each other, even though one sets the other in motion and I thought it was wonderfully done.
My only qualm with the book was that it left more loose ends in terms of completion, that frayed into existence like a letter that ends abruptly and left me wanting for more when I flipped the last page.
But I really liked it and recommend it for Roy’s writing, her incredible craft of writing about ordinary moments with a beautiful ease and the memorable characters that leave their mark on us!
September 20, 2021
One thing noticeable is Anuradha Roy's novels (three I have read so far) consist of subtlety, delving into art forms, kneading layered stories like a perfect dough to bake them into a singular piece of fiction for its readers to consume.
In her latest, 'The earthspinner', an expression showing how our lives slushy like clay is shaping in the hands of gods and religiosity separating humans from humans. Elango, a local potter, is driven by a Clay Horse on fire underwater in his dreams. To give rest to his disturbing dreams, he decides to shape the horse for real.
Sara, our narrator and Elango's student, reflects on his life closely in her diary entries. His love for Zohra and Chinna, an abandoned dog whom he adopts. But cross-religious beliefs upheavals puts a twist in the story.
In this novel, where the artistic inclination is on the higher side leading to darkness, Chinna's story brightens it up, changing our minds in a whiff. He becomes part of the story when a couple is attacked almost to death in a forest.
When everything disrupts in the story, from Sara struggling to find the whereabouts of Elango after he fled with Zohra to searching the meaning of love in Karin's company at her college in the UK, there is a sense of healing she finds in her lost art of pottery. That's the beauty of this novel, like a lump of clay, it moulds, breaks, and finally takes a perfect shape for admiration by the readers.
Tied with magical realism, myths and originality of art, Roy delivers a compact story in her evocative writing style to be read and nurtured with patience.
In her latest, 'The earthspinner', an expression showing how our lives slushy like clay is shaping in the hands of gods and religiosity separating humans from humans. Elango, a local potter, is driven by a Clay Horse on fire underwater in his dreams. To give rest to his disturbing dreams, he decides to shape the horse for real.
Sara, our narrator and Elango's student, reflects on his life closely in her diary entries. His love for Zohra and Chinna, an abandoned dog whom he adopts. But cross-religious beliefs upheavals puts a twist in the story.
In this novel, where the artistic inclination is on the higher side leading to darkness, Chinna's story brightens it up, changing our minds in a whiff. He becomes part of the story when a couple is attacked almost to death in a forest.
When everything disrupts in the story, from Sara struggling to find the whereabouts of Elango after he fled with Zohra to searching the meaning of love in Karin's company at her college in the UK, there is a sense of healing she finds in her lost art of pottery. That's the beauty of this novel, like a lump of clay, it moulds, breaks, and finally takes a perfect shape for admiration by the readers.
Tied with magical realism, myths and originality of art, Roy delivers a compact story in her evocative writing style to be read and nurtured with patience.
July 10, 2023
meh, mogłam zrobić dnf, w ogole do mnie nie trafila, a zaczynalam 3 razy xD
April 2, 2023
I found this quite emotional and confusing. I think I need to reread it to appreciate all the threads throughout the different perspectives. Also, I think wonder how many people picked this up thinking it’s by Arundhati Roy
January 6, 2025
I cannot begin to talk about this book without talking about how much reading it felt like music. There was something like drum-beats that was so inherent to the way it was written that I heard the beats speed up and slow down depending on where we found ourselves in this short novel. Two hundred something pages, but by the time I finished, it felt like I knew this story for an age.
Sara is a literature student in England, slowly returning to her love for pottery, an art she learned back in India from her almost eccentric but passionate teacher, Elango. Elango wakes up from the dream of a terracotta horse, taking it upon himself to create it. For whom, he cannot say, but his heart belongs to Zohra, a Muslim girl who is the granddaughter of a calligrapher, and in this time of fanatic devotion and religious feuds, their love is forbidden. Soon, though, with the companionship of his loyal dog Chinna, Elango begins his creation. At the same time, his student, Sara begins to navigate through her own life and her place in it as her neighborhood seeks to know what Elango, Zohra, and the calligrapher are up to, and she finds herself lost and deeply affected by the following incidents, so much so that she recounts them in her diary during her time in England. England, too, is a complex place and she finds herself negotiating often with her memories, identity, and relationships as she slips into adulthood.
This is a story about community, love, families, and often times about grief. "Navigating" is perhaps the verb I would use to describe this experience of reading because it constantly felt as if I was following the characters down whatever path they were leading me, trusting them to be right. I felt a great deal of kinship towards Sara, empathizing with her almost every step of the way. I thought that the prose was absolutely lovely, and that the writing flowed really well and also fitted really well with this exact story. It was whimsical and simple at the same time, and it was really easy to place everything in my head in order, and ultimately took a good deal of time going through the book because it required me to slow down to really enjoy the experience of reading. The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy is artistic, and poetic, and all the other descriptors in between, and if there's anything you're planning on reading this year, it should be this.
I see a face reflected back at me in the window glass, and it is as if I am in the room but my face is outside, asking to be let in. I don't know this face. I need to work out how to reassemble myself.
Sara is a literature student in England, slowly returning to her love for pottery, an art she learned back in India from her almost eccentric but passionate teacher, Elango. Elango wakes up from the dream of a terracotta horse, taking it upon himself to create it. For whom, he cannot say, but his heart belongs to Zohra, a Muslim girl who is the granddaughter of a calligrapher, and in this time of fanatic devotion and religious feuds, their love is forbidden. Soon, though, with the companionship of his loyal dog Chinna, Elango begins his creation. At the same time, his student, Sara begins to navigate through her own life and her place in it as her neighborhood seeks to know what Elango, Zohra, and the calligrapher are up to, and she finds herself lost and deeply affected by the following incidents, so much so that she recounts them in her diary during her time in England. England, too, is a complex place and she finds herself negotiating often with her memories, identity, and relationships as she slips into adulthood.
This is a story about community, love, families, and often times about grief. "Navigating" is perhaps the verb I would use to describe this experience of reading because it constantly felt as if I was following the characters down whatever path they were leading me, trusting them to be right. I felt a great deal of kinship towards Sara, empathizing with her almost every step of the way. I thought that the prose was absolutely lovely, and that the writing flowed really well and also fitted really well with this exact story. It was whimsical and simple at the same time, and it was really easy to place everything in my head in order, and ultimately took a good deal of time going through the book because it required me to slow down to really enjoy the experience of reading. The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy is artistic, and poetic, and all the other descriptors in between, and if there's anything you're planning on reading this year, it should be this.
July 17, 2022
I was attracted to Earthspinner by the pottery and mythic horse. We kick off the story following Sarayu/Sara at a university in England feeling homesick and spending time at the university pottery studio. This brings back reminiscences of her pottery teacher Elango in Andhra Pradesh, India when she was a tween. Elango comes from a family of potters; the area of the neighbourhood he lives in called Kummarapet derives its name from potters in Telugu (Kummara) where pottery is an ancestral vocation and caste.
Elango dreams of making a terracotta clay horse, the kind his ancestors used to make, a central feature of a Hindu festival at the temple. He wishes to gift it to his love, Zohra, whom he has a clandestine relationship with because interfaith relationships would not be tolerated. The timeline of the book is in late 1970s, after Emergency with Morarji Desai being Prime Minister.
As an amateur pottery dabbler myself, I enjoyed the descriptions of pottery making. The mythology of the terracotta horse is fascinating, especially the part in relation to placing Lord Shiva's fires into the mare and putting it into the ocean, where it still walks the ocean floor (myth of the submerged mare). Elango asks Zohra's blind grandfather, a renowned calligrapher, to carve some Urdu words onto the horse and the poem he chooses is just breathtaking. I loved all the poetry in this book.
Hate and intolerance crescendos into mob violence where no one is left unscathed. Later, Sara loses her father to cardiac disease and leaves India for university studies. She befriends a Malaysian Chinese Karin Wang at the university pottery studio. The sense I get is of these young ladies trying out their newfound freedom and possibilities while still wrestling with the strictures of their home countries.
All in all, Earthspinner evoked wonder in me. I loved the geology talks by Sara's father
But his voice seeped into us, and his oddly soothing discourses on plate tectonics, much of which we did not understand, collected in me and Tia and shaped us in the way limestone forms unnoticed in warm and calm seawater from sediments of shells and algae that remain in it as fossils. We would fall asleep to the sounds of plates diverging, converging, sliding past each other, in the process causing new mountains to rise, oceans to churn, and continents to form or rupture.
My father would have said change was the work of the earth spinning, spinning as it always had.
4.5 ⭐️
Elango dreams of making a terracotta clay horse, the kind his ancestors used to make, a central feature of a Hindu festival at the temple. He wishes to gift it to his love, Zohra, whom he has a clandestine relationship with because interfaith relationships would not be tolerated. The timeline of the book is in late 1970s, after Emergency with Morarji Desai being Prime Minister.
As an amateur pottery dabbler myself, I enjoyed the descriptions of pottery making. The mythology of the terracotta horse is fascinating, especially the part in relation to placing Lord Shiva's fires into the mare and putting it into the ocean, where it still walks the ocean floor (myth of the submerged mare). Elango asks Zohra's blind grandfather, a renowned calligrapher, to carve some Urdu words onto the horse and the poem he chooses is just breathtaking. I loved all the poetry in this book.
Hate and intolerance crescendos into mob violence where no one is left unscathed. Later, Sara loses her father to cardiac disease and leaves India for university studies. She befriends a Malaysian Chinese Karin Wang at the university pottery studio. The sense I get is of these young ladies trying out their newfound freedom and possibilities while still wrestling with the strictures of their home countries.
All in all, Earthspinner evoked wonder in me. I loved the geology talks by Sara's father
But his voice seeped into us, and his oddly soothing discourses on plate tectonics, much of which we did not understand, collected in me and Tia and shaped us in the way limestone forms unnoticed in warm and calm seawater from sediments of shells and algae that remain in it as fossils. We would fall asleep to the sounds of plates diverging, converging, sliding past each other, in the process causing new mountains to rise, oceans to churn, and continents to form or rupture.
My father would have said change was the work of the earth spinning, spinning as it always had.
4.5 ⭐️
September 12, 2021
What spins our earth, that makes us what we are? Many of us agree on this entity to be God. But this book is not about Him. This is the story of a most unusual teacher – one who imparts life lessons – belief in one's dreams, in humanity.
This is the story of Elango, living in a poor hamlet, somewhere in Andhra Pradesh, as observed by Sarayu. He is a potter, and he spins earth to create terracotta pottery. He narrated exotic stories to Sara and her younger sister, when they were children. He also teaches Sara pottery making, as she grows into adolescence. He falls in love with Zohra, a young woman from another religion.
One night he dreams of a mythical horse, breathing fire from its nostrils, travelling underwater through eternity. He creates this creature on his spinning wheel, a gift to his lover. Sara is her willing pupil and helper. Their love may have tragic consequences, yet one is left shocked, when it actually happens. He moves out of Sara’s life.
Sara looses interest in pottery. She moves to England for higher studies and makes new friends. She also re-discovers her love to create – she starts working on pottery in the college studio. Elango once again enters her life in London, and imparts another valuable lesson – to pursue her passion, and perfection will be hers. He again goes out of her life – for her to discover herself on her own.
This is a simple story beautifully narrated. The pace is almost relaxed as you start reading – but this languor is deceptive. Without realising it, the pace builds up – you keep turning the pages, wanting to know the future of all the characters. You root for Sara as she makes perfect pottery – she has found her passion.
She is also now an earth spinner.
#TheEarthspinner #AnuradhaRoy
https://instagram.com/foldedearth?utm...
#HachetteIndia
https://instagram.com/hachette_india?...
This is the story of Elango, living in a poor hamlet, somewhere in Andhra Pradesh, as observed by Sarayu. He is a potter, and he spins earth to create terracotta pottery. He narrated exotic stories to Sara and her younger sister, when they were children. He also teaches Sara pottery making, as she grows into adolescence. He falls in love with Zohra, a young woman from another religion.
One night he dreams of a mythical horse, breathing fire from its nostrils, travelling underwater through eternity. He creates this creature on his spinning wheel, a gift to his lover. Sara is her willing pupil and helper. Their love may have tragic consequences, yet one is left shocked, when it actually happens. He moves out of Sara’s life.
Sara looses interest in pottery. She moves to England for higher studies and makes new friends. She also re-discovers her love to create – she starts working on pottery in the college studio. Elango once again enters her life in London, and imparts another valuable lesson – to pursue her passion, and perfection will be hers. He again goes out of her life – for her to discover herself on her own.
This is a simple story beautifully narrated. The pace is almost relaxed as you start reading – but this languor is deceptive. Without realising it, the pace builds up – you keep turning the pages, wanting to know the future of all the characters. You root for Sara as she makes perfect pottery – she has found her passion.
She is also now an earth spinner.
#TheEarthspinner #AnuradhaRoy
https://instagram.com/foldedearth?utm...
#HachetteIndia
https://instagram.com/hachette_india?...
June 28, 2023
zamisliti (serbo-croatian) = to imagine; to conceive, plan; to think, muse, ponder (become absorbed or lost in thought); to become concerned. a zămisli (romanian) = (regional, dated) to conceive (a child), to give birth; (dated, figuratively) to create
i usually don't connect with stories about creation and the creative act, so the fact this book managed to get to me is quite something.
those of us who spent enough time on tumblr already know all about the man who invented goldfish crackers and about lovers inventing their own language; and this can be taken so much further. any relation we have to those around can be summed up as its own act of creation. beyond elango's calling and his need to create, there is something else behind the horse he makes. it appears to him in a dream, and fills him with a fervour. in this same state he finds his beloved Chinna in the woods, in this same state he meets Zohra and falls into a forbidden love. it is so beautiful to read these parts of him being so young, energetic, filled with that creative flow and that desire to make something monumental of this love. the horse is an an amalgamation of everything and everyone important in his life, it is the center of his young life in a sense: it is a testament of his and zohra's love and the life they hope to have with chinna by their side; his young student sara helps him in the process; zohra's grandfather decorating the horse with his writing is a particularly beautiful moment - he puts aside elango's religion for his personhood, and their different religions for the sake of art and poetry. the horse gives even the old caligrapher a different sense of renewed purpose. it is such a monumental act of creation and you feel that its completion will bring about elango and zohra's forever lasting love and happiness, a sort of officialization and completion of their hidden love, yet all it brings is suffering. the horse is now completed, and people come to admire it, and you feel like it is being SEEN and understood as the piece of art it is - a testament of an unjustly forbidden love, and a tribute to the art of elango's grandfather and implicitly his calling as a potter, inherited from generations of ancestors behind him, and a statement about what art is, something that unites people, something that worships humanity and beauty and love and leaves aside humanity's vanity and conflicts and beliefs and discords. a horse like those elango's grandfather made for his hindu temple, but inscribed with poetry in urdu by a muslim calligrapher. you think people are seeing and understanding all this, but the way it all gets treated like a carnival soon reveals how this is the beginning of a process of bastardization, of perversion - and then the downfall. the creation of the horse and everything it represented was so lovely and filled with hope, but as monumental as the final product was, so was monumental the damage its destruction created. violence ensues, the horse is destroyed - elango and zohra must run away, leaving an old grandfather, a brokenhearted pottery student, a loyal dog, a ruined brother and sister-in-law behind. it disrupts the life of the entire community, the life of their families, the peace of the entire village that is soon also wiped out as so many other things in this world that do not survive the earth's spinning and the moving of tectonic plaques - so much is lost in the constant change. i loved the juxtaposition of pottery and sara's father's passion for geology. as the clay spins on the potter's wheel, pieces falling off, its shape changing constantly under the molding hand of its Creator, so the earth spins around its axis, pieces falling off, communities being ripped apart, people losing each other, the destiny of this world being molded by the hand of a Creator we might as well understand as some chaotic will that follows no logic.
my life was changed when i studied garcia marquez's a hundred years of solitude and learned about how it encompasses the entire world in its pages, the history of an entire universe from creation to destruction - and since then, i have been looking for that quality to create and then destroy in every book. this is a book about creation, and, as everything seems to include its own opposite, creation cannot be separated from destruction, birth from death. we follow the story of the horse from the first spark of an idea in elango's mind to the destruction it brings about with its ruin. the story of the world our characters live in, where they lose one another just to find each other again in a foreign, distant land; where they cross paths with other people, learn and guard their secrets, then leave each on their own path again; where they fall victim to acts of violence and bigotry; this world, this earth is a vase on a potter's wheel, in a state of constant change, losing and gaining and being shaped. that's sort of what being human is - we might all be just pieces of clay in a monumental act of creation, earth to be turned back into earth. when we disappear, we just turn into a different form of substance on this earth - we are never truly gone, just a different element in the constitution of this earth. there's something almost holy and just beautiful in how the earth is so self-contained, and everything arises from it and goes back into it. our earth is a life form of its own, nothing is added and nothing is substracted - everything is already Here, constantly being recycled, and from dust were we made and dust we shall be.
Am lasat loc acolo, vezi? O sa tin acum lampa, si tu o sa gravezi numele noastre pe cal - al tau, al meu si al lui Chinna. In limba ta.
i usually don't connect with stories about creation and the creative act, so the fact this book managed to get to me is quite something.
those of us who spent enough time on tumblr already know all about the man who invented goldfish crackers and about lovers inventing their own language; and this can be taken so much further. any relation we have to those around can be summed up as its own act of creation. beyond elango's calling and his need to create, there is something else behind the horse he makes. it appears to him in a dream, and fills him with a fervour. in this same state he finds his beloved Chinna in the woods, in this same state he meets Zohra and falls into a forbidden love. it is so beautiful to read these parts of him being so young, energetic, filled with that creative flow and that desire to make something monumental of this love. the horse is an an amalgamation of everything and everyone important in his life, it is the center of his young life in a sense: it is a testament of his and zohra's love and the life they hope to have with chinna by their side; his young student sara helps him in the process; zohra's grandfather decorating the horse with his writing is a particularly beautiful moment - he puts aside elango's religion for his personhood, and their different religions for the sake of art and poetry. the horse gives even the old caligrapher a different sense of renewed purpose. it is such a monumental act of creation and you feel that its completion will bring about elango and zohra's forever lasting love and happiness, a sort of officialization and completion of their hidden love, yet all it brings is suffering. the horse is now completed, and people come to admire it, and you feel like it is being SEEN and understood as the piece of art it is - a testament of an unjustly forbidden love, and a tribute to the art of elango's grandfather and implicitly his calling as a potter, inherited from generations of ancestors behind him, and a statement about what art is, something that unites people, something that worships humanity and beauty and love and leaves aside humanity's vanity and conflicts and beliefs and discords. a horse like those elango's grandfather made for his hindu temple, but inscribed with poetry in urdu by a muslim calligrapher. you think people are seeing and understanding all this, but the way it all gets treated like a carnival soon reveals how this is the beginning of a process of bastardization, of perversion - and then the downfall. the creation of the horse and everything it represented was so lovely and filled with hope, but as monumental as the final product was, so was monumental the damage its destruction created. violence ensues, the horse is destroyed - elango and zohra must run away, leaving an old grandfather, a brokenhearted pottery student, a loyal dog, a ruined brother and sister-in-law behind. it disrupts the life of the entire community, the life of their families, the peace of the entire village that is soon also wiped out as so many other things in this world that do not survive the earth's spinning and the moving of tectonic plaques - so much is lost in the constant change. i loved the juxtaposition of pottery and sara's father's passion for geology. as the clay spins on the potter's wheel, pieces falling off, its shape changing constantly under the molding hand of its Creator, so the earth spins around its axis, pieces falling off, communities being ripped apart, people losing each other, the destiny of this world being molded by the hand of a Creator we might as well understand as some chaotic will that follows no logic.
my life was changed when i studied garcia marquez's a hundred years of solitude and learned about how it encompasses the entire world in its pages, the history of an entire universe from creation to destruction - and since then, i have been looking for that quality to create and then destroy in every book. this is a book about creation, and, as everything seems to include its own opposite, creation cannot be separated from destruction, birth from death. we follow the story of the horse from the first spark of an idea in elango's mind to the destruction it brings about with its ruin. the story of the world our characters live in, where they lose one another just to find each other again in a foreign, distant land; where they cross paths with other people, learn and guard their secrets, then leave each on their own path again; where they fall victim to acts of violence and bigotry; this world, this earth is a vase on a potter's wheel, in a state of constant change, losing and gaining and being shaped. that's sort of what being human is - we might all be just pieces of clay in a monumental act of creation, earth to be turned back into earth. when we disappear, we just turn into a different form of substance on this earth - we are never truly gone, just a different element in the constitution of this earth. there's something almost holy and just beautiful in how the earth is so self-contained, and everything arises from it and goes back into it. our earth is a life form of its own, nothing is added and nothing is substracted - everything is already Here, constantly being recycled, and from dust were we made and dust we shall be.
October 26, 2023
Mi-a plăcut cel mai puțin dintre toate cele patru romane semnate de Anuradha Roy pe care le-am citit. Există cărți nejustificat de stufoase pentru povestea subțire pe care o deapănă, pe când altele, cum este și “Calul de lut”, dețin un enorm potențial literar, care este explorat superficial. Mă refer la profunzimea conflictului religios dintre hinduși și musulmani, dar și la schițarea precară a unor personaje, chiar și secundare, care cred că ar fi îmbogățit mult povestea (Zohra, bunicul caligraf, Raghav, tatăl Sarei). Pare un roman scris pe repede-înainte ca să fie predat la termenul-limită fixat de editură.
May 1, 2024
What people called destiny...best to embrace it and be grateful. Mysterious things happen in this world, we cannot know it all.... The wise know better than to analyze every single thing. p47
My father would have said change was the work of the earth spinning, spinning as it always has. p148
Anuradha Roy has spun an intricate story of vision and manifestation, loss and return, but it wasn't until I recovered from the impact it had on me that it hit me that the central character, a potter who was mentor to the narrator, could also be called an earthspinner.
The ground beneath her feet shifts its plates and she moves on, leaving no trace. p155
4/5
6/7
My father would have said change was the work of the earth spinning, spinning as it always has. p148
Anuradha Roy has spun an intricate story of vision and manifestation, loss and return, but it wasn't until I recovered from the impact it had on me that it hit me that the central character, a potter who was mentor to the narrator, could also be called an earthspinner.
The ground beneath her feet shifts its plates and she moves on, leaving no trace. p155
4/5
6/7
April 18, 2025
Cartea m-a atras inca de la titlul ei care promite mult mister si o poveste cu multa însemnătate. Așteptările acestea nu au fost detronate, cartea fiind frumos construita. Aerul mistic al povestii m-a transpus intr-o stare de curiozitate permanenta si autoarea are un fel de a scrie minunat. În părțile prezentate ca si jurnalul ei, scrisul este mai personal, pe cand in părțile in care istorisește povestea lui Elango reuseste sa imbrace totul intr-o forma de basm realist. Pentru mine, povestea lui Elango reprezinta un refugiu pentru Sara. Aflandu-se singura intr-o tara straina, fiindu-i dor de casa, de familie si de cum erau timpurile trecute, alege sa traiasca in acele amintiri care au fost definitorii pentru existenta ei. Relatia pe care o are cu lutul este foarte frumos descrisa si transpusa de-a lungul cartii.
In concluzie, sunt multe detalii in carte care sunt frumos punctate și asupra carora poti contempla.
In concluzie, sunt multe detalii in carte care sunt frumos punctate și asupra carora poti contempla.
June 25, 2023
what a gentle book
June 28, 2022
With "The Earthspinner", Anuradha Roy has managed to write a somewhat timeless parable of love lost and regained, paradise lost and regained, as well as humanity lost and regained.
When I started reading this, the first chapter felt a little out of place, but it helps set some context for what comes next, and for what comes ultimately. The story is set in or around the Indian city of Hyderabad during the 1970s, and while there are times when it felt meandering a bit, the overall flow is quite poetic and lyrical. Most of all, her writing has a certain rhythm to it, and even some of her main characters seem to imbibe a certain poetic dexterity in their day-to-day lives. There were passages I had to read and re-read - they were just written so beautifully.
The promised horse, when it makes its first appearance in all its majesty, too is spot on in its rendition of numerous legends, with an almost mythical promise of deliverance - deliverance from sorrow, from strife, from time itself. These moments when Elango is working on his horse are perhaps the best parts of the novel. His obvious passion flies right off the pages, and is contagious to the other characters as well.
The overall storyline is also well structured, with just enough descriptions of discord and violence to make it scary and yet at the same time, since the first-person narrator is just a child at the time of these occurrences, it doesn't yet have the gruesome details of an adult's narration. Just the loss of innocence, and irreversibility of the flow of time.
The juxtaposition of religious strife on the love story was poignantly done, and served to create a fitting portrayal of society’s ills in India at the time. I can affirm from personal experience that, if anything, it was perhaps a mild dose of reality. The primary purpose of a good story is to tell something new, show a new perspective, share a novel idea - and while the problems highlighted here are not new per se, it was endearing to see them from the eyes of a child - reminded me of Dickens’s Great Expectations or even Narayan’s Swami and Malgudi Days, to put an Indian spin on things.
Having said all that, I must admit I had a difficult time wading through the final chapter, which sort of dragged on, with pages of redundant material, that don't add to the core narrative, and neither do they add to our characters' development or help ur decipher anything novel.
I was hoping for some closure on what happened to Elango, and his muse, and the horse, and whether there were other horses (!) … but, nothing came up.
A bit of a letdown - that last chapter, but not enough to stop me from looking out for the next work of this author.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
When I started reading this, the first chapter felt a little out of place, but it helps set some context for what comes next, and for what comes ultimately. The story is set in or around the Indian city of Hyderabad during the 1970s, and while there are times when it felt meandering a bit, the overall flow is quite poetic and lyrical. Most of all, her writing has a certain rhythm to it, and even some of her main characters seem to imbibe a certain poetic dexterity in their day-to-day lives. There were passages I had to read and re-read - they were just written so beautifully.
The promised horse, when it makes its first appearance in all its majesty, too is spot on in its rendition of numerous legends, with an almost mythical promise of deliverance - deliverance from sorrow, from strife, from time itself. These moments when Elango is working on his horse are perhaps the best parts of the novel. His obvious passion flies right off the pages, and is contagious to the other characters as well.
The overall storyline is also well structured, with just enough descriptions of discord and violence to make it scary and yet at the same time, since the first-person narrator is just a child at the time of these occurrences, it doesn't yet have the gruesome details of an adult's narration. Just the loss of innocence, and irreversibility of the flow of time.
The juxtaposition of religious strife on the love story was poignantly done, and served to create a fitting portrayal of society’s ills in India at the time. I can affirm from personal experience that, if anything, it was perhaps a mild dose of reality. The primary purpose of a good story is to tell something new, show a new perspective, share a novel idea - and while the problems highlighted here are not new per se, it was endearing to see them from the eyes of a child - reminded me of Dickens’s Great Expectations or even Narayan’s Swami and Malgudi Days, to put an Indian spin on things.
Having said all that, I must admit I had a difficult time wading through the final chapter, which sort of dragged on, with pages of redundant material, that don't add to the core narrative, and neither do they add to our characters' development or help ur decipher anything novel.
I was hoping for some closure on what happened to Elango, and his muse, and the horse, and whether there were other horses (!) … but, nothing came up.
A bit of a letdown - that last chapter, but not enough to stop me from looking out for the next work of this author.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
August 16, 2022
4.5 stars
I am grateful to the publisher HarperVia for sending me an advanced copy of this book for review.
I have never read from this author before, but I will definitely be looking into future works that come from her because the writing in here was exquisite. Not only was the use of language beautiful , but the way in which the story wove together and mimicked the motif of spinning clay that was carried throughout the story was just masterfully done. The author did an amazing job of selecting perspectives, characters, and settings that really enhanced the ideas that were being presented through the experiences of the characters and the stories told within this book.
I feel like as the book went on, we were weaving in and out of different stories, ideas, and lives, studying how interconnected we all are. The way these separate stories converged in the end was beautiful in the same way our character throughout the story worked towards creating this clay horse that he had envisioned and was able to finally create the finished piece. It may be a personal preference, but I do really enjoy when an author takes one passion or interest that characters have or share (pottery in this case) and makes that into a thread that connects every part of this story to the other, creating something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
I really enjoyed this story and I think most of the enjoyment comes from the reading experience itself , because there is much sadness and hardship in this plot. This emotion was emphasized by how tangible these characters were written. Even the settings added to the complex atmosphere of this story, and helped us to share in the characters’ longing, fear, grief, and uncertainty. When I got to the end of the book, I immediately wanted to read it again.
I do not think that explaining more about the plot or going into more detail about the characters would help you to grasp the joy of the reading experience. If you've been interested in this book, I urge you to pick it up. I recommend this book to fans of literary fiction, cultural stories, and beautiful writing.
I am grateful to the publisher HarperVia for sending me an advanced copy of this book for review.
I have never read from this author before, but I will definitely be looking into future works that come from her because the writing in here was exquisite. Not only was the use of language beautiful , but the way in which the story wove together and mimicked the motif of spinning clay that was carried throughout the story was just masterfully done. The author did an amazing job of selecting perspectives, characters, and settings that really enhanced the ideas that were being presented through the experiences of the characters and the stories told within this book.
I feel like as the book went on, we were weaving in and out of different stories, ideas, and lives, studying how interconnected we all are. The way these separate stories converged in the end was beautiful in the same way our character throughout the story worked towards creating this clay horse that he had envisioned and was able to finally create the finished piece. It may be a personal preference, but I do really enjoy when an author takes one passion or interest that characters have or share (pottery in this case) and makes that into a thread that connects every part of this story to the other, creating something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
I really enjoyed this story and I think most of the enjoyment comes from the reading experience itself , because there is much sadness and hardship in this plot. This emotion was emphasized by how tangible these characters were written. Even the settings added to the complex atmosphere of this story, and helped us to share in the characters’ longing, fear, grief, and uncertainty. When I got to the end of the book, I immediately wanted to read it again.
I do not think that explaining more about the plot or going into more detail about the characters would help you to grasp the joy of the reading experience. If you've been interested in this book, I urge you to pick it up. I recommend this book to fans of literary fiction, cultural stories, and beautiful writing.
October 12, 2021
Much like the cover, the story is vibrant and exhalating, raging with fire and burning in different hues. Anuradha Roy’s writing doesn’t fail – the smooth flow, the imagery, the eminent use of words keeps one on their toes to know more.
The story is written in a mismatched format. It shifts from narration to diary entries to random letters, a mix and match to get the story to sting together into a whole. And in complete Roy fashion, the novel ends with loose ends for the reader to figure out.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. This is the kind of writing that reminds me why I tend towards fiction more than anything. The story did feel a bit draggy at times, it was worth everything that unveiled. Certain parts of the novel felt surreal and I could almost imagine them right in front of my eyes, like the way the Urdu script was described or every time Elango dreamt of the horse coming alive.
The book explores themes of religion, superstition, home, love, longing, lost crafts and much more. All of it originating from different ends, intervening into each other at some point and again going their own way.
My one trouble with the book is that it took a lot of time. The writing style is fluid and loose, and it takes a while to get used to. While it is also entertaining, it got frustrating to read at multiple points. While I commend a good story, it did drain me out with it.
If you are someone who appreciates open-ended, flowy stories with advance use of language, this is definitely the book for you!
The story is written in a mismatched format. It shifts from narration to diary entries to random letters, a mix and match to get the story to sting together into a whole. And in complete Roy fashion, the novel ends with loose ends for the reader to figure out.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. This is the kind of writing that reminds me why I tend towards fiction more than anything. The story did feel a bit draggy at times, it was worth everything that unveiled. Certain parts of the novel felt surreal and I could almost imagine them right in front of my eyes, like the way the Urdu script was described or every time Elango dreamt of the horse coming alive.
The book explores themes of religion, superstition, home, love, longing, lost crafts and much more. All of it originating from different ends, intervening into each other at some point and again going their own way.
My one trouble with the book is that it took a lot of time. The writing style is fluid and loose, and it takes a while to get used to. While it is also entertaining, it got frustrating to read at multiple points. While I commend a good story, it did drain me out with it.
If you are someone who appreciates open-ended, flowy stories with advance use of language, this is definitely the book for you!
October 24, 2021
Anuradha Roy’s much awaited (not least of all by me) new novel contains everything one expects of a writer of such subtlety and intelligence. There is the overarching theme of religious prejudice ( Hindu against Muslim) but also the transformative and healing powers of art ( here pottery) and most importantly the role animals play in our lives. Each of the characters in this book - Elango the potter, Zohra his Muslim lover, Sarayu the young girl who becomes Elango’s apprentice, and most especially Chinna- the puppy Elango saves in the forest and raises to be a sensitive and magnificent dog - is finely realized. If there is a flaw to this book it is that there are too many themes and subplots. However Roy’s lyricism and humanism is as always a joy. Five stars!
October 13, 2022
This novel uses two characters, a potter in India, and a young woman who learns pottery from him, and then travels to school in England, to investigate all the ways in which art and knowledge can bring people together, while prejudice tears them apart. Simultaneously tender and merciless, this novel is one I will be thinking about for a long time.
October 29, 2021
Liked the word's and proses that were written about the grand old dog of kumarrapet, chinna. Loved the way the journey of the terracotta horse was depicted. But nothing more. Feeling kinda incomplete.
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