Love the Dark Days

By: Ira Mathur

Narrated by: Ira Mathur

Set in India, England, Trinidad and St Lucia, Love the Dark Days follows the story of a girl, Poppet, born of mixed Hindu-Muslim parentage in post-independence India. Growing up in silk-swathed splendour and with her grandmother's prejudices of class and race, she is also the dark child in her family, a feeling of unbelonging repeated when her family migrates to multicultural Trinidad, meeting Indian people, several generations away from India, with a very different sense of themselves. She begins writing about her experiences as a way of trying to make sense of them. In her darkest hour, she meets Derek Walcott, who encourages her to leave the past behind and reinvent herself. All this takes place in a society suffering an attempted coup by Muslim extremists and a rising crime rate with reported incidents of spectacular brutality.

Can Poppet, through her writing, examine each broken shard of her shattered family relations and reassemble it into a new shape in a new world? Can she make sense of herself in relation both to her own family and the Trinidadian family she marries into, and grow enough to achieve the courage it takes simply to be human? Raw, unflinching, but not without threads of humour and perceived absurdity, Love the Dark Days is an intricate tapestry that has Poppet’s story at its heart.

"Compelling." (The Guardian)

"A transcendent memoir about extremes of love and hate, princely wealth, and the rebellious, righteous poor. I loved it." (Maggie Gee)

"A blaze of a book, astonishing, colonial, post-colonial, modern and post-modern... Exquisitely written." (Monique Roffey)

"A compelling memoir of the binding power of love and the liberating beauty of forgiveness." (Earl Lovelace)

©2022 Ira Mathur (P)2022 Ira Mathur

Quite a ride through the human experience

Rich, raw and riveting. The writing is quintessentially Ira, packed with sensory detail. Colonial history interspersed with one individual's experience which is both very personal yet universal in its cross-cutting human themes.

"A must read"

if you live in the melting pot of Trinidad you will thoroughly enjoy Ira's very unique story of how she came to these islands and how she fitted in. it's a family story full of unusual twists and turns. Ira's reads the story in her unique beautiful accent. congratulations on this lovey book. keep writing Ira!!

A descriptively rich novel

I loved this book. I was transported to other places other times. The vocabulary filled my mind's eyes with colours and textures and emotions. The story transported me into Ira's thoughts and into my life experiences at the same time. The book deserves all the accolades it will receive.

Fantastic all-rounder

A story about moms and daughters, families, and spouses, by round trip through India, Trinidad and London. Frank and profound.