Kites from Another Sky is also unique as it draws from the real historical facts to conjure an imaginary world which has echoes to the present day.
Trina Mukherjee
Kites from Another Sky is Trina Mukherjee’s fist novel and second book since she made her debut as a poet in 2012 with Peonies for Breakfast. While the book of poems was a narrative style offering, it was quite different from other poems one gets to read in a similar genre.
Kites from Another Sky is also unique as it draws from the real historical facts to conjure an imaginary world which has echoes to the present day.
The book is a direct homage to childhood with reflections and observations from the author’s own which have been interwoven into the story of a 10-year-old child Khiev and how she perceives the world around her from the tiny imaginary town of Kien Svay where she resides with her widowed mother Chau Chi. At the cusp of adolescence, Khiev is a precocious child and deeply immersive of the changes that she observes around her, understanding and exploring the evolving dynamics of relationships both past and present.
The novel explores how Khiev and her mother Chau Chi, both victims of the Genocide in Cambodia, emerge out of the crisis with help from another war veteran Captain Schneider from Germany who has had a similar existential crisis in the past which had turned his life upside down.
Set in the aftermath of the genocide in Cambodia unleashed by the Khmer Rouge regime, the central characters of the story live their lives in a perennial void. Being a mute spectator to the horrors of mass murders, Chau Chi suffers from PTSD and represses her pain by burying herself in the mundane without caring much for the emotional wellbeing of her child, Khiev.
The story is set during 1994–1995, a period of transition and political turmoil in Cambodia which witnesses a tectonic shift in governance from communism to monarchy and as a consequence of which the sense of insecurity and fear further deepens in the minds of its people.
A lonely child, Khiev has a difficult relationship with her mother which never gets a chance at betterment due to a communication gap between the two. “The story evolves and so does the relationship between the mother and daughter,” quips Trina.
Deeply moved after reading several accounts of the horrors unleashed by the brutal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Trina wanted to explore the unspeakable grief of loss through her novel.
“It is an intangible thing, something which cannot be expressed through words but can be felt through the lives of victims who have had to bear the brunt of unspeakable tragedies. That is what I wanted to explore through my novel,” says Trina.
A Mumbai- based writer who started her career in advertising, Trina Mukherjee has dabbled in journalism for a while. She loves to write articles on politics, history and has contributed for newspapers like the Times of India and the Indian Express in the past.
Trina is also a songwriter, primarily writing in English, Hindi and Bangla. She has worked on established brands like McDonalds, Pantaloons, Oppo mobile, Jabong, Kwality Walls, Mahindra, Cadbury, Galaxy chocolates to name a few, in English as well as in Hindi and Bangla. She is currently working on the songs of an unreleased film and has written for Do Aur Do Pyar released in 2024. Trina is a pianist, still learning an advanced level of Western Classical Music on the piano, is an amateur composer and singer. Trina is the lead artist and owner of her homegrown brand Bag of Bong which makes hand painted home decor and fashion items. In her free time, a mother of two young children, she loves exploring new places, travelling, writing, painting, designing and playing music.
“Trina’s book was quite different from the general submissions one comes across as this was a book set outside India and narrated the story of three unlikely heroes, who surge ahead with great fortitude despite the odds stacked against them. The sensitivity with which Trina handled the subject made it a winner for us and we knew that we had to represent it. And our belief in the book was reinstated when a respected publishing house like TreeShade Books acquired the rights for the book,” says a visibly happy Suhail Mathur, CEO & Co-Founder of one of India’s biggest literary agencies, The Book Bakers.
With realistic characters, in-depth research and a narrative that immediately holds you in a vice like grip, Trina Mukherjee brings out one of the most poignant books of the year!
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