03/20/2023

Oza’s impressive debut spans four continents and five generations of an Indian family as they’re forced to migrate again and again for political and economic reasons. In 1898, 13-year-old Pirbhai, the oldest son of a poor family in western India, heads out to find work. He’s conscripted to a railroad builder in Kenya, where he labors for several years. After the project is finished, he lucks into a job at a store run by an Indian family and later marries their eldest daughter, Sonal. The couple then moves to Uganda to work at a pharmacy. In 1972, Pirbhai’s son Vinod and his wife and three daughters, who have sunk roots into Uganda, are exiled by Idi Amin, with most of the family moving to Toronto, before their lives are disrupted again by the 1992 racial uprising. In chapters alternating between the many characters’ points of view, Oza builds momentum toward a denouement involving a letter from Vinod’s lost daughter in Uganda. Though the format doesn’t allow for much character development, Oza neatly sets her characters’ lives within the context of broader political and economic movements, showing how historical circumstances determine their individual destinies as much as the choices of their forebears. Though it can be tiring, this broad and colorful portrait has plenty of impressive moments. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (May)

Remarkable….a haunting, symphonic tale that speaks to the nuanced complexities of class and trauma for this particular family. This demand — and spirit — for bolder storytelling that transcends borders and identities certainly can be found in Oza’s generous novel.”—New York TImes Book Review, Editors Choice

"An ambitions family drama skillfully explores the bonds of kinship and. the yearning for peace and security."—Kirkus (Starred Review)

"This striking epic combines powerful characters of different generations, compelling storytelling, dramatic settings and conflicts, and thoughtful explorations of displacement and belonging, family ties, citizenship, loyalty, loss, and resilience."—Booklist (Starred Review)

"[A] highly accomplished debut ... the novel blazes fiercely."—The Economist

"Vast and intricate, alight with love and contained fury, A History of Burning is a towering debut by a phenomenal writer. A book I want to press into readers' hands and discuss for hours."—Megha Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning

“A riveting testament to home, exile, survival, and inheritance. Janika Oza is a writer you won’t want to miss.”—Lisa Ko, National Book Award finalist for The Leavers

“A History of Burning is that rare epic that manages to retain both its sweep and its intimacy. Janika Oza has written a generational saga vivid and alive with sensory and historical detail, an excavation of stories often left untold. This is a beautiful book, unflinching yet deeply engaged with that most human work, the work of forgiveness.”—Omar El Akkad, author of American War

“A History of Burning is as transfixing as a flame. Janike Oza writes strikingly and steadily, with exquisite, incisive detail, about making one's home in imperfect places. This is a book about what it means to be part of a family and lineage, in all its heartbreaking and wondrous complexity."—Rachel Khong, award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin

"Intimate and epic… A hymn for the ancestors, and the bitter, radiant acts of their survival: this book is a triumph."—Shruti Swamy, author of A House is a Body

“Oza’s writing reminds people that vulnerability and openness are the only ways we can save each other. A History of Burning is the art we need now.”—Megan Giddings, author of Lakewood

“Ambitious in scope and dazzlingly executed... A tour de force.”—Sharon Bala, author of The Boat People

Oza’s writing reminds people that vulnerability and openness are the only ways we can save each other. A History of Burning is the art we need now.

Vast and intricate, alight with love and contained fury, A History of Burning is a towering debut by a phenomenal writer. A book I want to press into readers' hands and discuss for hours.

A riveting testament to home, exile, survival, and inheritance. Janika Oza is a writer you won’t want to miss.

Intimate and epic… A hymn for the ancestors, and the bitter, radiant acts of their survival: this book is a triumph.

A History of Burning is as transfixing as a flame. Janike Oza writes strikingly and steadily, with exquisite, incisive detail, about making one's home in imperfect places. This is a book about what it means to be part of a family and lineage, in all its heartbreaking and wondrous complexity.

Ambitious in scope and dazzlingly executed... A tour de force.

A History of Burning is that rare epic that manages to retain both its sweep and its intimacy. Janika Oza has written a generational saga vivid and alive with sensory and historical detail, an excavation of stories often left untold. This is a beautiful book, unflinching yet deeply engaged with that most human work, the work of forgiveness.

★ 2023-03-11
Four generations of an Indian family struggle with displacement in this debut novel.

Artfully juggling the perspectives of 10 characters over the span of nearly a century, Oza follows the members of an ordinary family from India to Africa to Canada as they struggle to maintain their cultural traditions and solidarity amid an often hostile environment and changing social norms. Pirbhai, the patriarch, is lured to Africa as a 13-year-old in 1898, where he’s pressed into indentured servitude laying track for the British railway to Lake Victoria. His fateful decision to obey an order to set fire to a village the British wanted gone provides the novel’s title and looms over his descendants as a sort of original sin. After he moves from Kenya to Uganda, his family slowly climbs the economic ladder into the middle class until the moment in 1972 when the dictator Idi Amin orders the expulsion of all Asians. When Arun, an anti-government activist, disappears following his arrest, his wife, Latika, Pirbhai’s granddaughter, allied with her husband in the struggle against the repressive regime, chooses to remain behind rather than joining her parents, siblings, and her own infant son on their journey to Toronto and the beginning of a new life in yet another alien land. The family’s fears about her fate give birth to a secret that will reverberate in their lives decades later. Oza subtly observes the shift from practices like arranged marriages to unions that are the product of romantic attachments and trusts her readers to acclimate themselves. In intimate domestic scenes and scenes of societies in turmoil, she displays a sure-handed ability to write at both small and large scale and to portray with deep sympathy the universal human desire to find “a little place to simply exist, freely, and with dignity.”

An ambitious family drama skillfully explores the bonds of kinship and the yearning for peace and security.