‘A compelling memoir of the binding power of love’

“Love the Dark Days is a troubled and troubling book, a heady brew that stays with you.”–The Observer (UK)

“This brave and inspiring feminist critique of patriarchy and gender oppression set in Trinidad-- framed by the delusional greed and grandeur of colonial India and a weekend in St. Lucia spent with Nobel laureate Derek Walcott—has terrific promise as a biting movie adaptation for the #MeToo era.”–Etan Vlessing, Hollywood Reporter

“One of the most beautiful books I have read for a long time.”–Michael Portillo, Times Radio-UK

“A blaze of a book, astonishing, colonial, postcolonial, modern and post modern-a Caribbean feminist #metoo memoir that examines inherited patriarchal damage of women and societal norms brought from the Old World to the New. This exquisitely written book examines familial love and fateful blood ties while scrutinising, with compassion, a flawed patriarch and Magnus too, Derek Walcott. Mathur deftly yokes together parallel worlds, colonial India and post-colonial Trinidad. Both worlds are dark, and both worlds hurt women. A memoir like this has never torn itself out of the Caribbean.”–Monique Roffey Winner of Costa Book Award 2020

“A moving post-colonial book about mothers and daughters of India.” Anita Rani- Women’s Hour, BBC, UK

“Ira Mathur takes the reader deep into the darkest spaces of her family history. Relentlessly honest, she tells a story of dispossession, patriarchy, passion and the wounds of a divided inheritance. Moving from pre-Independence India to Trinidad and London, we see the growing pains of the author as she decodes her relationships with her glamorous parents, her beautiful piano-playing authoritative grandmother and her siblings. In a world between poverty and privilege, she is guided by Derek Walcott, and Naipaul is ever present. Ultimately, she must find her own voice, truth, and reconciliation. A window into a world rich in history that few know about. A compelling read.”–Shrabani Basu, author of Victoria & Abdul

“I was transported by this gem of a memoir, written over even years by an award-winning, Indian born journalist, dubbed the “Jon Snow” of Trinidad. Monique Roffey is spot on when she calls it a “blaze of a book.” set in her home nation, but also in St Lucia, India, and London, it’s a multi-layered account of a woman growing to feminist maturity while grappling with the ongoing traumas that result from her turbulent childhood. With many memorable characters, including her formidable grandmother Burrimummy, it also features Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, a mentor of her work.”–Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller, UK

“A compelling memoir of the binding power of love and the liberating beauty of forgiveness.”– Earl Lovelace, Trinidadian novelist and playwright, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize

“Glorious writing full of hard-won wisdom. A transcendent memoir about extremes of love and hate, princely wealth, and the rebellious, righteous poor. I loved it.”–Maggie Gee, the first female chair of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL)

“The stretch from a Mughal empire ancestry to the arrangements between the Mountbatten set and the Nawab of Savanur, the treachery and false promises of a dismantled empire are all channelled through the annoyed, disinherited Burrimummy. We see Trinidad through an experienced journalist’s eyes, Walcott and Naipaul.”–Alan Mahar, novelist and former publisher

“What marvellous and heartrending crossroads multiplied during the twentieth century. Between east, west, north, and south, many kinds of ancient and untold modes of modern, from “man” and “woman” to vulnerable beings of imagination and heart ... Over the years, I have witnessed Ira Mathur navigating an all too human writer’s life; I have yearned for her to put something of her beauty, wisdom and pain into print. Here it is. Stranger and more compelling than any fantasy, here we are.” –Vahni (Anthony Ezekiel) Capildeo, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Winner of the Forward Prize 2016

“Love the Dark Days is an absorbing and illuminating work of memoir, which manages to straddle continents and epochs while retaining a tight focus on the vibrant characters who link and inhabit them. It is questing and self-questioning, and admirably understanding the inextricability of the past and the present.”–James Scudamore, novelist, winner of the 2007 Somerset Maugham Award, Costa First Novel Award shortlist

“One of the most powerful and exciting new voices in contemporary literature. Love the Dark Days is an extraordinary, multi-layered memoir, drawing threads from the colonial past into a moving, contemporary story of fragile relationships. Ira Mathur is a real find.”–UK David Haviland, publisher, editor and writer.

“Born in the post-colonial era to a pale-skinned Muslim mother of royal antecedents and a bourgeois Hindu father, an army man of high ranking, Ira is a child of religious, colour, class and geopolitical conflict. She is then transposed into Tobago life, and later on, she attends boarding school in England before settling in Trinidad as a grownup. Her estate is one of inter-generational violence, micro- and macro-political aggressions, and devastating power plays.”–Teresa White, Trinidad Guardian

“The torturous Indian childhood, ignored (at best) by two generations of mothers caring more about one’s springboard into society than one’s bored offspring, is connected to the chilling end, the consequences of accepting motherhood that neither one’s parent nor grandparent risked, by the small strands of the grownup, finished and accomplished writer, in St Lucia, in the shadow of the Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott, mashing up his stove and his memory and finally asserting herself … if only in these small links that may go unnoticed and unappreciated. Indeed, the reader has to go back to these interludes at the end of the story to appreciate how well they work to connect the book in the hand of the reader to the voice of the writer. “Remarkable” might be too weak a word; “enviable” might be better.”–BC Pires, Newsday (T&T).