The Zigzag Way
A Novel
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A young American in Mexico discovers his family’s past—and a present-day danger—in this “elegant, exquisite” novel of suspense (Elle).
Eric is a newly minted historian just out of graduate school, plagued by self-doubt over both his past choices and his future options. With no clear direction, he follows his lover, Em, when she travels to the Yucatan for her scientific research, but ends up alone in this foreign place. And so he pursues his own private quest, tracing his family’s history to a Mexican ghost town, where, a hundred years earlier, young Cornish miners—among them Eric’s grandparents—toiled to the death.
Now, in place of the Cornish workers, the native Huichol Indians suffer the cruelty of the mines. When he inquires into their lives, Eric provokes the ire of their self-appointed savior, Dona Vera. Known as the “Queen of the Sierra,” Dona Vera is the widow of a mining baron who has dedicated her fortune to preserving the Huichol culture. But her formidable presence belies a dubious past.
The zigzag paths of these characters converge on the Day of the Dead, bringing together past and present in a moment of powerful epiphany. Haunting and atmospheric, with splashes of exuberant color and darker violence, The Zigzag Way is “a beautifully rendered combination of history, folklore, and modern fiction” (Entertainment Weekly), from a Booker Prize finalist.
“Long before Jhumpa Lahiri . . . long before Monica Ali . . . another novelist was offering us exquisitely detailed portraits of bodies in transit [and] classes in the art of sly and sensuous fiction . . . Anita Desai was a global, migrant writer before such a thing was fashionable.” —Time
“Almost unbearably suspenseful.” —The Boston Globe
“A hypnotic journey.” —San Jose Mercury News
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like the recent film Lost in Translation, Desai's new novel tells of an American adrift in a foreign culture that remains frustratingly inscrutable. Eric is a New England born graduate student in history at Harvard who follows his scientist girlfriend, Em, on a research trip to Mexico. Once she sets off with her colleagues to conduct field observations, he is left alone and overwhelmed by his own lack of purpose. Remembering that his Cornish grandfather, about whom he knows next to nothing, had worked as a miner in the Sierra Madre in the early part of the 20th century, he determines he will use the trip to find out more about his family's past. Along the way he meets an eccentric, powerful European woman, Do a Vera, who has become a champion of indigenous culture but whose own past is mysterious. The stories of Eric, his grandparents and Do a Vera are interwoven into a short, contemplative narrative. Eric is a passive narrator, clambering his way through the beautiful but beguiling scenery, which is described in florid, dense prose reflecting his sensory overload, in a story that never really gains momentum. While Desai has uncovered a compelling chapter in Mexican history, the novel is a meandering, disappointing journey.
