From award-winning writer Anjali Joseph, a compelling new novel about a dysfunctional love affair.

Meet Ved, a British investor heading back to his Indian roots with a business proposition: a lightbulb called the everlasting Lucifer.

Meet Keteki, an art curator with a nomadic lifestyle, on her way home to Assam.

In Heathrow airport, on the way to Mumbai, their paths cross, sparking a love affair that soon turns into an intricate power game — and a complicated journey towards intimacy.

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‘It is at its best in scene-setting or when conjuring up the exquisiteness of India, whether the unkempt, lush splendour of Assam … or simply a wet day in Delhi.’

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‘The story stretches out the narrow boundaries of magic realism — you will find yourself more grounded in the matter-of-fact world we live in — where Joseph transmutes the ‘sameness of everydayness’ into the extraordinary. You will discover every shower bringing out its own special rainbow. Keeping in Touch is a very old-fashioned love story in a modern time, where the seduction of a 30-something British Asian man by an Assamese woman assumes epic undertones. This is a story well told. It is hard to put the book down after you have read the first few pages. The aftertaste lingers long after the book is done and dusted.’

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‘A fragile story of reluctant commitments … this is not just a love story but an intricate political saga of contemporary times. The author has interwoven a layered narrative … Anjali Joseph has written an outstanding novel. An excellent read.’

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‘Keeping in Touch is an ode to ordinary lives of people with extraordinary experiences and legitimate expectations … Keeping in Touch also moves through a series of “lasts” and “finals” till you reach the beginning of the road to self-discovery … The cinematic quality of Joseph’s storytelling is unmistakable. The interplay of crisp scenes makes the story read like a screenplay … embrace both the strange and the familiar realities in life, and never lose touch with either.’

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‘A novel with a lingering resonance for our times … Keeping in Touch is edgy, funny, and uncompromisingly modern.’

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‘Anjali Joseph has the gift of writing from the perspective of the outsider. The accounts her protagonists give of their experiences in her novels manage to be wry, detached and honest all at the same time … Keeping in Touch, like Joseph’s other novels, seamlessly switches perspectives of the protagonists, and has the same measured pace.’

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‘Joseph is particularly good at evoking … visceral experiences, of being displaced from one’s own context and thrown into another, of meeting other people in other places, and of the life crackling in those fleeting encounters that animates the spirit. She does this in unassuming, clear prose … Joseph is equally capable of lush, gorgeous visions that strike the reader suddenly, arresting, like the sight of ordinary beauty … Her writing illuminates the mundane and mysterious pace of life, the long and slow parts before major transformations that propel characters into greater self-awareness, or awareness of the world.’

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‘Unusual and enchanting.’

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