Announcing: New Skin for the Old Ceremony: A Kirtan by Arun Sood
(Photo: Robin Christian photography)
The book news just keeps on coming! We’re thrilled to be publishing Arun Sood’s fantastic debut novel New Skin for the Old Ceremony: A Kirtan in September 2022. It may be a year away, but it’s available to pre-order today.
New Skin For The Old Ceremony: A Kirtan 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, the ghosts of friendship, and growing up as a mixed-race person in a small but fiercely proud nation, the story spans India and Skye, seeing the characters exorcise past ghosts in order to face the present.
The form of this novel draws on the idea of a Kirtan - a Hindu genre of storytelling focusing on music, shared narration, and spiritual ideas. Kirtans usually draw on Vedic texts and music 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. The mashing up of form and cultural references speaks to some of the broader issues of identity and belonging which the characters discuss during their trip.
“It’s genuinely exciting to publish my fiction debut with 404 Ink, as I’ve enjoyed their authors for some time now, and I’m still processing that I will become one of them!” says Arun. “New Skin For The Old Ceremony is about youth, mis-belonging, music, race, and motley motorcycle rides across Northern India and Skye as four unlikely friends try to reconnect after a decade apart. It was fun to write, and I’m just honoured that Heather and Laura felt it might be fun to read too.”
We feel very fortunate about the quality of writing that lands in our inbox during open submissions windows, but Arun’s novel was one that really had us brimming with excitement from its arrival.
Laura said: “I knew there was something special about Arun’s writing as soon as he said (and I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing this) that even though New Skin ‘draws on a Beat-esque travel narrative, I want it to be anti-Beat! I.e. Nobody has sex, does drugs, or finds spiritual enlightenment. In fact, they end up frustrated, but then glad just to have small talk around a fire, which turns out to be more illuminating to them at that stage in their life than the grander gestures of soul searching they did in their youth.’ I’ve never heard of a more relatable anti-typical-finding-yourself narrative and I’m so happy that we’ll be publishing it. Move over Eat Pray Love, this is the real deal.”
You’re in for something really special with this one. Pre-order your copy below.
