Yvonne Vaz’s historical novel offers layers of stirring events interlaced with fictional personal stories ---indeed, a glittering canvas of light and shadow. Isabel de Santa Rita Vas—former professor of English, guest faculty at Goa University and founder, The Mustard Seed Art Company, Goa.When a long-buried secret is revealed to Robin Fernandes about his biological father in wartime Burma, it sets him on a journey through personal and historical pasts.
The story slips back to Rangoon in the 1940s, a period that experienced Japanese bombings, forced migration to Goa---the former Portuguese colony along the west coast of India---and the quiet struggles of rebuilding life after trauma. Set in real events, this novel draws from survivors’ first-hand accounts of Burma during World War II.
The story moves to a quiet village in Goa, during Portuguese rule, where generations that follow in the Menezes family navigate marriages, deaths and transitions. Multilayered themes explore how secrets echo through families and how healing unfolds when the past is finally faced. An enthralling work of historical fiction that spans generations, timelines, places and memories shaped by love, war, loss and belonging.
Yvonne Vaz was born in Burma (Myanmar), spent her most memorable years there, and returned to Goa at the age of 32 in 1982. She wrote the first-ever books on the South Asian diaspora in Burma in 2007 and 2019, and also her quasi-memoirs call This is My Song.
