My Van Gogh

But he was lying there beside her, waiting for her answer. A stranger. They were strangers.

She turned slowly away from him, towards the window. And against the bright blue sky, she saw the storks flying away in formation, an arrow in the sky. They'd started their long journey at last, back to their other home. They'd dared to dream again. And roam the skies for something they'd loved and lost, perhaps.

'Perhaps,' she said turning back.

In poetic vignettes set against the fascinating exotics of Australia and France, Chandani Lokugé weaves a haunting and meditative story on the spectral gains and losses of travel, the nature of its transience. Through it, she dignifies with grace and tenderness, our unassuageable yearning, when we have lost everything and even ourselves, to anchor to something, someone, somewhere, and the unexpected moment of our arrival.

"A haunting, mystical reading experience, suffused with history, art, and recovery from trauma. An inspired travelogue... the damaged genius of Van Gogh brooding over the narrative, with hints of both joy and anguish." - Chris Ringrose

Chandani Lokugé is an Associate Professor at Monash University. She read for her doctoral degree on a Commonwealth Scholarship. She is the author of nine books. As the Editor of the scholarly Oxford Classics Reissues series of pioneering Indian women's writing in English, she has published six books including, The Collected Prose and Poetry of Toru Dutt and The Memories of Cornelia Sorabji: India's First Woman Barrister. Her current academic research is on the aesthetics of South Asian diasporic literature.