The Tiniest House of Time

(Paperback)

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*Shortlisted for the Small Press Network 2021 Book of the Year Award*

The Tiniest House of Time is more than a family saga, ranging across continents and decades seamlessly, from colonial Burma in the 1930s to nationalist Malaysia in the 1990s and beyond, to Hong Kong and Australia. The reader is thrust into the lives of far-flung middle-class Indian communities: immersed in family and local politics and intimate relationships, swept along in the tide of grand historical events.

History works in cycles, repeating itself, until we finally understand that everything that has happened, has always already happened.

The story is driven by Iyer's two main characters, both strong women Susheela Sastri and Sandhya Sastri who are grandmother and granddaughter, but could have been born of the same atom. Sandhya visits her grandmother's deathbed after having run away from her country, her family, her love, and herself. She remembers her grandmother's stories, of a lost time in Burma, and digs deep to find truth in it. A dying Susheela, impatient with her family's pity, asks Sandhya to read to her. It opens up past events in both their lives, the family dynamics, the forbidden loves, the politics of who can be hated, when, and by whomAnd what can they, as women of their times, actually do about it.

'The historical background of this book is complex and fascinating, as is the story of these two women's lives as they negotiate dilemmas around culture, religion, and race.' The Sydney Morning Herald

'Sreedhevi Iyer'sThe Tiniest House of Timeis a book for our time, examining as it does the profound silences that a family lives with, silences embedded in a history of displacement, and the uprooting from what was considered home. In tracking hidden and unspoken histories, of which there is little written record, the author has written something of a psychoanalytically focused and politically acute narrative, as she explores through her finely structured novel, an evocation of generational trauma across migratory continental space. With much sensitivity and intelligence, Iyer delineates the colonial legacy of race relations, and how this legacy weighs down on those societies still navigating them.' Mascara Literary Review

View sample chapters here

Reviews

"The Tiniest House of Time is an unforgettable portrait of an Indian-Malay family caught in the maelstrom of history and of a young woman who must make sense of all that she's inherited and all that she's lost. Iyer has written a truly epic novel, smart beautiful tough and wise. Not to be missed."
- Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prizewinner

'The Indian Diaspora has spread across the world, carrying within each family stories and secrets that remain hidden unless prodded by circumstances. In Sreedhevi Iyer's novelThe Tiniest House of Time, pre-war Burma and post-colonial Malaysia form the bookends of a family saga that brings together a grandmother with stories not yet shared and a granddaughter keen to find and assert herself. Stories that grandmothers tell their grandchildren are meant to comfort and pacify, but as Sandhya Sastri and her grandmother Susheela begin their journey, they make discoveries that shift from the personal to the political, the individual to the collective, and what's not been told and what must be said.'

- Salil Tripathi, writer and journalist

'The ever-shifting sands of people and place: who we are and where, are deftly explored by Sreedhevi Iyer in this insightful and charming novel. With sensitivity and subtly, Iyer explores the many shades of the universal 'I'. No-one has a single, fixed identity, rather we slip between worlds and between roles. How does one reconcile the different people we all are, in different places, in different times, with different people And what does it mean to know another from the isolation of our own 'multi-verse' Susheela and Sandhya are two peas in a pod, grandmother and grand-daughter, they share everything: the same birthdate, the same stars, a connection "on a level quite inexplicable". But everyone has secrets...'

- Ben Doherty, author

Author Bio

The Tiniest House of Time is more than a family saga, ranging across continents and decades seamlessly, from colonial Burma in the 1930s to nationalist Malaysia in the 1990s and beyond, to Hong Kong and Australia. In a wonderfully engaging and intimate story-telling style redolent of Amitav Ghosh's, the reader is thrust into the lives of far-flung middle-class Indian communities: immersed in family and local politics and intimate relationships, swept along in the tide of grand historical events. The novel is a rare window into a world of untold histories of the voiceless Indian diaspora in places and times where the enemy might be different, but the trauma, prejudice and hatred remain the same. History works in cycles, repeating itself, until we finally understand that everything that has happened, has always already happened. The story is driven by Iyer's two main characters, both strong women--Susheela Sastri and Sandhya Sastri--who are grandmother and granddaughter, but could have been born of the same atom. Sandhya visits her grandmother's deathbed after having run away from her country, her family, her love, and herself. She remembers her grandmother's stories, of a lost time in Burma, and digs deep to find truth in it. A dying Susheela, impatient with her family's pity, asks Sandhya to read to her. It opens up past events in both their lives, the family dynamics, the forbidden loves, the politics of who can be hated, when, and by whom... And what can they, as women of their times, actually do about it.