New Skin for the Old Ceremony, Arun Sood
New Skin For The Old Ceremony: A Kirtan is the debut novel from Arun Sood. The novel follows four estranged friends who reunite for a motorcycle trip up the Isle of Skye, in the hope of coming to terms with how their lives have splintered since a transformative ride in Northern India fourteen years earlier.
In their fumbling attempts to spiritually reconnect, expectant father Raj, recently widowed Vidushei, perpetually youthful Liam, and perpetually fragile Bobby test the limits of their friendship around campfires, on twisty roads, in unexpected Ayahuasca ceremonies, and against discussions of belonging, race, and identity.
A novel about youth, music, the ghosts of friendship, and how colonial legacies pervade personal histories, the story spans India and Skye, seeing the characters exorcise past ghosts in order to face the present. The form of this novel alludes to a Kirtan - a Hindu genre of storytelling focusing on music, shared narration, and spiritual ideas. Kirtans typically draw on Vedic texts but Arun subverts the form by structuring the Kirtan in relation to tracks from a Leonard Cohen album, New Skin For The Old Ceremony, which the characters grew fond of during their time in India.
Arun Sood reading from New Skin for the Old Ceremony
New Skin for the Old Ceremony is by Arun Sood, a Scottish-Indian author, musician, and academic, who explores diaspora, identity and mixed-race heritage in his debut novel. It’s another brilliantly evocative book for your listening pleasure and we’re delighted to be hosting it on nb’s website.
This podcast is edited and produced by Megan Bay Dorman, and programmed by Matt Casbourne.
Damian Barr’s Literary Salon is where the freshest debuts and the biggest bestsellers read for the first time from their latest greatest books and share their own personal stories.
Enjoy the Literary Salon podcast's Book of the Week where each bite-sized episode offers an exclusive taster of a new book. World premieres include Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain, Maddie Mortimer's Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies and Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait. You're going to love it.
Hosted by writer and broadcaster, Damian Barr, produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman and programmed by Matt Casbourne.
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