Maze of memories

A family full of tales is all it takes to understand a society and its past

- FAIZAL KHAN

THE middle of Krishna Candeth's debut novel, All Stray Dogs Go to Heaven, is a sentence that holds together a menacing maze of memories that spill the beans on the nature of families. "Ifhistory is written by the winners, then that goes for family history too," says a man.

Another echoes his statement: "Yes, you are right, we see it all the time, the way the lies of one generation pass unquestioned on to the next. In the end, it's not family history at all, it's family politics." Candeth's novel lays down the story of one family whose members work overtime to weave a daunting fabric of family history and family politics. Set in a family home in the panoramic Malabar region of Kerala, All Stray Dogs Go to Heaven strings together accounts of parents and their children, even friends, to create an unenviable arch of relationships. Waves of nostalgia feed the novel's narrative that straddles the past and present in a socio-cultural mosaic of life and remembrance.

The novel begins with a quirky delivery of The Small Forest Book, an assortment of loose sheets in a blue binder to Nitya, the central character. The sheets contain texts of musings by Nitya's friend Chinma during the many weeks both had spent wandering in the Western Ghats.