nwasianweekly.com
Oct. 14, 2006

Splendor of Silence, by Indu Sundaresan. Published by Atria, 2006.

Indu Sundaresan’s latest novel is the unforgettable story of Sam Hawthorne, an officer in the U.S. Army, and Mila, a beautiful Indian aristocrat, who together must negotiate an interracial relationship during the waning days of British colonial rule.

With a cast of heavily nuanced characters, from Jai, a royal prince who has asked Mila to marry him, to Vimal, a young nationalist leader hoping to free India, the novel explores themes of racism and colonialism in a masterful interweaving of romance, history and intrigue. The story begins during the 1960s near Seattle, when Olivia Hawthorne, daughter of Sam and Mila, receives a mysterious box that arrives at her door just after her father’s death. As she opens the box, she finds a letter addressed to her by an unknown man who happens to know the intimate details of her family history, including the story of how her parents met.

The letter takes her back 20 years to four fateful days in 1943, when her father, posing as an Army officer, comes to the princely state of Rudrakot in search of his lost brother. At this point, two narratives emerge, one chronicling the love affair that threatens to tear apart Mila’s family, and another depicting Sam fighting Japanese soldiers in Burma just before his arrival in India. Sundaresan is an expert at taut, emotionally engaging storytelling, and the gradual unfolding of the love affair is rendered with an effortlessness that only the best novelists can pull off. The scene when Sam sees Mila for the first time as she rides past him on a horse just as he arrives in Rudrakot is a model of stylistic restraint and grace:

“There was a loveliness about her, an elegance he could not describe even to himself. Her skin was a lush and creamy brown, her shirt collar a lustrous white against her neck; the khaki of her pants and the gleaming roan of her horse’s coat married into the background of the desert behind her.”
The other narrative involves Sam on a mission in the jungles of Burma, and though the story is not as emotionally engaging as the love affair, it does provide important background information that eventually becomes relevant at the novel’s end. Sundaresan deftly moves back and forth between the narratives, and the stories merge into an explosive climax that brings the story to a fateful conclusion.

Perhaps the novel’s strongest point is its relentless exploration of ethnic division that permeates every level of Indian and British society, from the aristocratic and nominally powerful Indian monarchs (who are dependent on the British for their power) to the educated commoners, who comprise the majority of the nationalist movement.

Splendor of Silence is a highly rewarding read by one of Seattle’s pre-eminent novelists.

Paul Kim can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.

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