In the literary tradition of Rohinton Mistry and Arundhati Roy, this ambitious debut novel is a moving tale of family, tradition, loss and reconciliation.

Meet Janaki and Mallika, two sisters from a middle-class Brahmin family in Madras, India. Janaki is a musical prodigy, sublimely gifted on the veena, but will soon be eighteen and dreads her aunt's schemes for an arranged marriage. Eschewing tradition, she runs off with a Muslim Bollywood star. Years later, Mallika receives a letter from Janaki, who is returning to Madras.

In confident prose that resembles the rhythms and progression of an Indian raga, Ameen Merchant captures in rich detail the world of these Brahmin women, a world restricted by caste and cultural rules but also teeming with colour, music and food. It is a story about the traditions that bind us and the sacrifices we must make along the road to our own individual destinies.

Ameen Merchant was born in Bombay and raised in Madras, India. The Silent Raga is his first novel. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he is working on his next novel and programming a new Bollywood audio channel called Chowpatty Beach for the CBC.

Ameen Merchant's profile page

• Nominated, Commonwealth Writers' Prize - Best First Book Award, Canada & the Carribbean
• Runner-up, Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design - Prose Fiction

"What Merchant does well is create a sense of reality through description. He brings a market scene alive with his depiction of colours and fragrances."

Winnipeg Free Press

"This debut from Mumbai-born Ameen Merchant...offers a recognizable lyricism, unfolding a rich banquet for the senses and a sensitive tale of two middle-class sisters driven apart by the hidebound traditions of their Brahmin heritage...We expect our novels of India to be kaleidoscopic and redolent, filled with scents and colours, the heady masala of cookery, the ever-present fecundity and decay of city life. Here, the kitchens and gardens, steaming streets and overheating bodies feel present to all the senses. Better, they're fully integrated with the storytelling. Merchant never pauses to paint a backdrop; the richness comes to us always through characters and events."

Globe & Mail

"The Silent Raga...is an exquisite blend of tradition and transition, exile and reconciliation, silence and eloquence, society and self, crisis and consciousness, where various stages of a raga's performance in recital breathe life into the mellifluous flourish of evocative prose...[it] eventually leaves readers in the refuge of an enchanting mistress, music."

Canadian Literature

"The Silent Raga...is a hugely entrancing tale of two sisters...Merchant's words verge on pure poetry as uniquely evocative of India as the sound of the santoor, the hammered dulcimar."

Canadian Immigrant

"A richly painted tale, revealing the caged heart of an artist who longs to soar on the power of her music...This is a gem of a novel, filled with brilliant imagery and an elegant style of writing. Readers will be filled with a sense of music playing, just a little out of hearing range. It's both a classical Indian raga and Bollywood soundtrack."

Toronto Star

"A moving tale of family, tradition, loss and reconciliation. In prose that resembles the rhythms of an Indian raga Ameen Merchant captures the world of these Brahmin women, a world restricted by caste and cultural rules, but also teeming with colour, music and food."

Delta Optimist

"The details of family life, food, music, Bollywood movies and the texture of everything from saris to sunburnt grass are delicious in this lively first novel."

More Magazine

"[Merchant] has a writer's eye for colour and action, a writer's ear for language and music, and a writer's obsessive interest in the patterns of human behaviour."

Quill and Quire