7 Books That Celebrate Underappreciated Crafts

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From Electric Lit:

In 1937, on the bank of the river Ravi in Lahore, the 10-year-old protagonist of my novel realizes that he is affected by smell in a way that others are not. On that day, he is inducted as an apprentice to his uncle at the family’s perfume shop, and so begins the formal education of Samir Vij. Set against the backdrop of the 1947 Partition, he falls in love with Firdaus Khan, an illuminator of manuscripts; their days filled with perfume and paper, olfactory and amorous impulses. 

The Book of Everlasting Things is at its heart a love story, but it’s also very much about characters who continue to practice traditional crafts—perfumery, distillation, calligraphy and illumination, paper-making, Ayurvedic medicine, carpet weaving, leatherwork and tanning—in a changing world. Perhaps it is my own training as a traditional printmaker that inevitably directs my attention to these now-rare, highly intricate, labor-intensive disciplines that have sadly been swallowed by the modern and automated. And so, in an effort to celebrate underappreciated art forms, ancient traditions, and unique occupations, I present a list of books that have informed the texture of my writing.

The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy

The Earthspinner deftly revisits the themes that Roy’s novels are well known for—history, memory, myth, and love. Elango is a Hindu rickshaw driver and potter whose dream is to create a terracotta horse, and whose crime is falling in love with Zohra, the granddaughter of a blind, Muslim calligrapher. A neighbor, Sara, becomes both witness and chronicler of his days, as she entwines herself into his life as his apprentice. One day, a lost dog, Chinna, appears, adopting the potter. With the completion of the terracotta horse, a community is enraged, and the pair of lovers flee into exile. Told in alternating first and third person, moving between India and England, the novel harnesses the elemental power of rain and fire, the strength of the earth, and the bodily nature of craftsmanship.

Link to the rest at Electric Lit