Rashi Rohatgi. Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow. Galaxy Galloper, 2020.

Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow describes a time and place little known outside of East India and Bangladesh. It starts out as a drawing-room novel but ends as a kind of political history. In turns, this reader was reminded of the Chinese classic The Dream of the Red Chamber and the Conrad story “The Secret Agent.”

Set in East India in 1905, when India included what is today Bangladesh and Myanmar, we meet a middle class family told from the perspective of daughter Leela, betrothed to Nash. Though their marriage has been arranged, they have fallen in love. Nash was studying engineering abroad in Japan until the dangers precipitated by the Russo-Japanese War sent him back home to India.

Nash and Leela corresponded during this time, and their correspondence really did become love letters. Their relationship is quite charming. But when Nash returns, the family and friends are confronted with modernity.

Nash had gone to Japan to study engineering because at the time it was the technologically most advanced nation in Asia. The young Indians like Nash, Leela, and their friends understand that Japan is more advanced because it is independent. So, yes, there is talk about Gandhi and independence from Britain.

The specific political issue that is affecting Leela and her friends, though, is segregation. She has attended a girls’ school that enrolled both Hindus and Muslims. The British government in India has decided it would make for more peace to segregate the schools, sending Muslims and Hindus to different schools. The girls from her school petition the government to keep the schools desegregated.

Zainab is Leela’s Muslim friend who supports this move. Zainab’s family is wealthier, so her brother owns a camera and enjoys taking photographs. When Zainab’s brother and Leela’s sister fall in love, though, there is a question about how “desegregated” they can become. When we discover how Zainab herself has maintained her wealth, more questions are raised. Leela’s widowed father, meanwhile, has an ongoing relationship with an Anglo-Indian lady. She is beautiful, but Leela and others look down on her because of her mixed race.

The drawing-room relationships are complicated, indeed, perhaps symbolizing what is happening and what will happen in India in the coming century. And as the political issues come to a head, we get a preview of what will happen in the country in the next fifty years. Leela’s confrontation with the Viceroy, who visits their city, is not what we expect at all.

For an understanding of an exotic culture in English, Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow reminds this reader of some of the work by Jhumpa Lahiri or The Hamilton Case. Its subtle but serious and even shocking personal drama is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf.

To this reader there is a serious flaw in the telling of the story. Since I am reading a pre-publication copy for reviewers, perhaps this will be corrected. The entire story is told from Leela’s first person point of view. But the language, even in dialogue, is the language of 2020, not 1905. There are numerous terms and figures of speech that did not exist in 1905 in English, let alone the English of India: backstory, in the loop, fallout, frisson, arch as an adjective, and women’s liberation, to name a few. One could imagine, I suppose, a woman nearing 100 years old looking back and using current jargon, but not such neologisms in the dialogue. With a serious revision of the wording, this book could become a real gem. As it stands, it is a fascinating story with some jarring, anachronistic language.