Snuffing out the Moon

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By: Osama Siddique

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2084 bce: In the great city of Mohenjodaro, along the banks of the Indus, a young man named Prkaa becomes increasingly mistrustful of the growing authority of a cult of priests.

455 ce: In the fabled university city of Takshasilla, Buddhamitra, a monk, is distressed by how his colleagues seem to have lost sight of the essence of the Buddha's message of compassion.

1620 ce: During the reign of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, two itinerant fortune seekers endeavour to swindle the patrician elite, only to find themselves utterly disillusioned.

1857 ce: Mir Sahib, a wandering minstrel, traverses the realms of human deception even as a rebellion against the British Raj is advancing across India.

2009 ce: In contemporary Lahore, the widow Rafiya Begum navigates legal complexities in order to secure her rights and fend off predatory charlatans.

2084 ce: A scholar revisits the known history of the cataclysmic events that led to world domination by ruthless international water conglomerates.

Across epochs and civilizations, these are intensely personal journeys that investigate the legitimacy of religion and authority, and chronicle the ascent of dissent. Snuffing Out the Moon is a dazzling debut novel that is at once a cry for freedom and a call for resistance.

Advance Praise for Snuffing Out the Moon

‘Criss-crossing historical periods and populating its multiple narratives with a diverse set of characters, Snuffing Out the Moon is a daringly original novel charting the past and the future of our civilization, and so illuminating the author’s view of our present. A challenging and thought-provoking read’—
Shashi Tharoor, author and MP

‘This novel stirred strange feelings in me. Its air is bleak and somehow forbidding. It is vast in scope but comparatively compressed in a space that the novelist uses expertly to draw for us the lineages of the past, the present and the future. It leaves us with the chilling vision that evil—greed or the impulse to destroy—is man’s destiny. Masterfully composed, the novel sums up aeons of history and culture with an assurance of narrative power that makes the picture of the past and the present as compelling as his imaginings of the future. Present fears are no less than the horrible imaginings, the novel seems to say. Learned and sagacious, the narrative pleases while it also awes the reader’—Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, author of The Mirror of Beauty

‘Osama Siddique’s ambitious historical novel will be of consequence not only to Pakistan but to the Indian subcontinent’—Bapsi Sidhwa, author of Ice-Candy-Man

‘Innovative, introspective and evocative, this remarkable debut novel gives poignant expression to an age-old human dilemma and one of the central challenges of our own troubled times: the choice between stultifying social conformity born of ignorance, intellectual laziness and fear, and the liberating agency that comes from doubt, dissent and defiance. Polyphonic in scope and written in the fragmentary and episodic mode, the intriguingly titled Snuffing Out the Moon deftly weaves together half a dozen different narratives informed by the rich sociopolitical, cultural and literary traditions of South Asia’s six millennia- long history. Beginning in 2084 BCE with the Indus Valley Civilization and ending in 2084 CE when the deadly politics of religious radicalism and water wars have drastically recast the face of South Asia, the novel is a gripping read. It dispenses with linear time by criss-crossing the past, present and the future in a disconnected fashion without becoming random and trivial or devoid of inner meaning and connectedness. A welcome addition to South Asia’s burgeoning trove of English-language literature, it will engage and absorb a cross-section of readers with its sparkling wit, lyrical bursts and welter of insights into human frailties and foibles’—Ayesha Jalal, historian and author of Jinnah: The Sole Spokesman