सिंही

Siṃhī: The Becoming

A literary novel in thirteen books, composed in the old Indian tradition.

Some books are read. Some are told. Some are carried.

This one was written to be all three.

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Siṃhī: The Becoming is the story of a young lioness who loses her mother in a storm and finds shelter in a cave — where a wise serpent, knowing she is afraid, begins to tell her a story. And in that story, there is another story. And in that one, another still.

What begins as a fable at the mouth of a cave opens, across thirteen books, into something larger: a literary novel about becoming, composed in the old Indian tradition of nested wisdom stories.

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Each book meets Siṃhī at a different threshold. She walks beside a tortoise who knows what patience costs. She meets a serpent larger than the world. She sits with a woman walking beside Death. Each encounter carries the oldest questions. What is innocence, and what ends it. What is power, and whether it belongs to the one who holds it.

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This is not a soft book, though it is a tender one. Grief is met, not avoided. Loss is real.

For readers of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, Richard Adams's Watership Down, Sue Monk Kidd's The Book of Longings, Clarissa Pinkola Estés's Women Who Run With the Wolves, and the old Indian fables themselves.

This is Siṃhī's becoming. In following hers, you may find yourself remembering your own.