A story with an evanescent subject. Elusive, almost non-existent characters, locations and context. A dark, foggy, heavy atmosphere. With the free and ethereal pen that has made her mark, Canadian writer Ying Chen explores in her works the timelessness of war, exile, and the fragmentation of identity. In Ahimsa, her latest novel, she focuses, in an allegorical story bordering on dreams, on the partition of India and the controversial legacy of its spiritual guide, Gandhi. Through three ghosts reincarnated as unloved animals – rat, fly, snake – and their ambiguous memories of a common master, she observes the complex and contradictory feelings which connect human beings to the history of their people and to the foundations on which their values and identity are established. By failing to detail the contours of her narration, the novelist certainly raises more questions than answers, but accesses, through analysis, a form of truth nourished by raw emotions and universal doubts.
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