Cirrus@Austlit

'A debut poetry collection by the acclaimed writer Suneeta Peres da Costa, author of the Prime Minister's Literary Award-shortlisted novel Saudade.

'In the title poem of Suneeta Peres da Costa's debut poetry collection, The Prodigal, the protagonist wakes to an imprint of tulsi beads marking her cheek where she slept, 'writing their faint, inscrutable calligraphy'. The poem recalling Elizabeth Bishop, W.S. Merwin and Derek Walcott invokes the collection's landscape of peripatetic and displaced being, traversed by themes of Goan and Indian history, diasporic identity, family and friendship, grief and illness, art and life. The book unravels myths of homecoming and return, belonging and displacement, patrimony and sovereignty; the poems' speakers feel both at home and also far from home. Best known for her work as a novelist, Peres da Costa expands upon the range of voices in her fiction, conjuring dramatic personae from Indian history and allegories from suburban Sydney, exploring lyric, narrative and essayistic modes. The collection reflects on artworks and objects: miniature Mughal watercolours and photographs of cockatoos; a tamarillo, a panettone. Passionfruit vines are disentangled; a street cobbler repairs the strap of a bag. Marked by its attention to the body, its strengths and infirmities, Peres da Costa explores the experience of suffering through earthly and human ecologies and primordial connections.'  (Publication summary)

'The bag of drugs is sitting untouched on the kitchen bench beside the cans of diced tomatoes and chickpeas I’d earlier quarantined. They – cans not drugs – may be useful, I think, although in less apocalyptic times, I might prefer to soak dried chickpeas to make hummus or chana masala. The chickpea glut follows a 9pm masked assault of Harris Farm Leichhardt and the fact the ex has recently turned up unannounced with a care package of more canned pulses, organic brown rice and greens than I have room to store. An Amma devotee never known to hug spontaneously, he’d stood at the mandated distance of one Kylie Minogue on the other side of my gate (less gateless gate than gate that never shuts properly, the broken latch, I observed as he handed me the box, one of the ten thousand things now unlikely to be repaired…).' (Introduction)

'A coming-of-age story set in Angola in the period leading up to the colony’s independence, Saudade focuses on a Goan immigrant family caught between complicity in Portuguese rule, and their dependence on the Angolans who are their servants. The title (saudade means ‘melancholy’ in Portuguese) speaks to the longing for homeland that haunts its characters, and especially the young girl who is the book’s protagonist and narrator. Suneeta Peres da Costa’s novella captures with intense lyricism the difficult relationship between the daughter and her mother, and the ways in which their intimate world opens up questions about domestic violence, the legacies of Portuguese slavery and the end of empire. The young woman’s intellectual awakening unfolds into a growing awareness of the lies of colonialism, and the violent political ruptures that ultimately lead to her father’s death, and their exile.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.