A few years ago I read the one and only self-published novel by award-winning writer (Sounds great, doesn't it? Well, it's true. But that doesn't necessarily mean you will ever have heard of her), Eileen Kernaghan.
Winter on the Plain of Ghosts: a Novel of Mohenjo-Daro. The book is set in the Indus Valley, so long ago that all we know of the culture that existed there is what we can divine from a set of clay seals (pictured above and below). Kernaghan does a wonderful job of filling in the world and peopling it with compelling characters.
I have no idea why, of all her lyrical and thoughtful adult and young adult novels, this one failed to find a publisher. After ten years of bouncing it around Kernaghan caved in to her husband's nagging and put it out herself under the imprint
Flying Monkey Press.
I am so glad he did keep bugging her. Left to her own devices, would she have thought it was just a lousy novel and gone on to the next beautiful gem? I don't know. What I do know is that I had (for me) a rare experience when reading this book
: that of spending the day, while off doing other things, thinking with great pleasure about the writing
—the words themselves and the places they were taking me
—and anticipating somewhat impatiently when I would get to be home again with feet up and
Winter on the Plain of Ghosts on my lap.
It has stayed with me as a precious read, but a faded memory, one I don't pull out too often. Recently I glanced at the book again and read the poem that opens it, a poem that is collected with her other delicious speculative offerings in
Tales from the Holograph Woods. It reminded me of how much I'd enjoyed the book, and how annoyed I am that so few people have had the chance to enjoy it as I have. So I thought I would introduce you to it and urge you, if you like what you see, to get a copy, read it, pass it around, and let the world know how much you enjoy this novel and this inestimable writer's work.
Mohenjo-daro
The salt earth
is bleached
and brittle as
old bone, in winter
on the plain of
ghosts.
Shrill and thin
down the grey
millennia, the
spirit voices
cry on the
parched wind.
Language of a
dead land―
the wind’s
riddles:
insistent and
insinuating
whisper of pale
grasses,
tongueless as
corpses the slow
suck and hiss
of the river’s
mouths
and age-deep in
the dust
of empty
water-courses
the cryptic
dialect
of broken
stones.
But on the
terraces below the citadel
a flute plays
and ghosts rise
in their shining bones
bedecked with
jade and lapis lazuli.
Above the
luminous pools white birds drift
long-stemmed as
water lilies
and terrible in
their stripes
behind the
broken walls the tigers walk
among the
glamorous trees.
This gives you a sense of Eileen Kernaghan's wordcraft and imagination. But let's give you a little of the novel itself. I shall indulge myself by adding a fair dollop of it below. Before we go, I'll add these links, and then leave you in Ms. Kernaghan's capable hands.
To read the review on the
Historical Novel Society website, click
here.
To order either the print edition or the e-book of
Winter on the Plain of Ghosts, click
here.
To order
Tales from the Holograph Woods, click
here.
Winter on the Plain of Ghosts:
A Novel of Mohenjo-Daro
PROLOGUE
this morning, when I visited the
warehouse, Akalla was breaking the seal on a chest full of luxury goods — among
them some jars of unguent imported from the western deserts of Meluhha. I took
one home with me and opened it in the privacy of my bedchamber. Released from
its stone container, the rich, oily perfume awoke a rush of memories.
Once
again I breathed the fragrance of oleander, growing high up in a desolate hill
pass. I heard the throbbing of the skin drums, the wistful music of the
reed-pipes; and the shrill voice of the desert wind, crying across the parched,
dun-coloured plain. But underneath the scent of spice and sun and flowers there
was a hint of something darker, muskier — a cloying, sweet-sour odour of the
swamp. And there rose in my mind's eye a vision of the great Meluhhan capitals,
those once noble cities of the plains. I saw them crouched behind their
crumbling walls like enormous stricken animals, choking on their own poisoned
breath.
Already
it is the month of Nisan. The floodwaters are rising, and another year is
almost over. I have lived long; have, I believed, sinned no worse than other
men; have suffered much, and have received many blessings from the gods. It is,
at this moment, as though I am standing on a high terrace, from which it is
possible to look down upon my life's beginning, and on its end.
And
so, in this city of Ur, in the reign of the great king Rim-Sin of Larsa, I, the
merchant-captain Rujik, set down my history — having instructed my storekeeper
to lay in a great quantity of clay.
