The Humanities Research Centre, The Australian National University, cordially invites you to the launch of Dr Kavita Nandan's novel Home After Dark.

Launched by Professor Jacqueline Lo, Director of the Centre for European Studies and Associate Dean (International) ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.

Set in Fiji, Australia and India, Home after Dark is the haunting tale of a young woman’s struggle to find happiness. The central story of a disintegrating relationship is woven into a narrative of deepening subtlety and power. The male protagonist is portrayed with empathy, but all the clues are there that things are falling apart. The pain of love and loss is intimately captured. The narrator sees herself as “someone for whom time had suspended, like a kite caught, torn, snared in an oak tree . . .”

The story is set against the background of the first Fijian coup on 14 May, 1987. The coup and its consequences to individual lives are poignantly reflected in the story and the unsuspected climax is powerfully evoked. Herself a product of several different worlds – Fiji, where she grows up, India, her maternal grandmother’s home and Australia, where her family moves after the Fiji coup – the writer takes the reader to the child’s world, village Fiji, the world of her eccentric grandma, urban Australia as life takes her from one to the other. Portrayed with vivid detail, these worlds collide and come alive for the reader. The humour, the reflections on life add to the compelling narrative. Home after Dark is a moving story of individuals buffeted like driftwood caught in the waves of the sea.

Home after Dark can be purchased at the Book Launch on May 7 or online from http://www.southpacificbooks.com/.

Please RSVP to Colette Gilmour.

Kavita Ivy Nandan is the editor of Stolen Worlds (2005) and Requiem for a Rainbow (2001); the co-editor of Writing the Pacific (2007) and Unfinished Journeys (1998). Home after Dark is her first novel. She completed her PhD in Literature at the Australian National University and has lectured in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Canberra, the University of the South Pacific, Charles Darwin University and the Australian National University. Kavita lives in Canberra and is married to Michael Kosmider. They have a son Jesse Arman.