Australian writer Inez Baranay, author of nine novels and numerous works of non-fiction, explores history, memory, and imagination in Soul Climate, a novel that traces Turkish freedom fighter and author Halide Edib’s 1935 journey to India.
Fulfilling a promise to Indian nationalist Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, Halide arrived in Delhi to deliver a series of lectures, staying in his sprawling Daryaganj home—a place of inclusive hospitality and historical encounters. Here, she met figures central to India’s independence struggle, most notably Mahatma Gandhi, with whom she had several conversations.
Before leaving, Halide promised to write a memoir of her time in India. In Soul Climate, Baranay’s narrator peruses that memoir and other writings, wondering what else Halide might have seen, remembered, or reflected upon.
As the novel observes:
“History has become the vengeful god…always accurate, unassailable, providing no avenue of appeal…History can be seen as a matter of competing narratives.”
Interwoven with these historical threads is a fictional narrative of three young women—friends and cousins—attending Halide’s lectures. Each is at a turning point in her life, and Halide’s words and presence speak differently to each, shaping their emerging worldviews and guiding their first steps on separate paths.
Soul Climate deftly blends memoir and fiction, realism and imagination. It invites readers to reconsider nationhood, religion, idealism, and identity, while reflecting on how history, memory, and storytelling shape the way we understand ourselves and the world. Through Halide Edib’s eyes and Baranay’s inventive narration, the novel illuminates India’s past and the possibilities of alternative histories yet imagined.
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