Artículos relacionados a Stellar Smoke: A Novel

Stellar Smoke: A Novel - Tapa dura

Tanaïs

 
9780593852859: Stellar Smoke: A Novel
Tapa dura
ISBN 10: 0593852850 ISBN 13: 9780593852859
Editorial: Dutton, 2026

Sinopsis

A hypnotically original and lush speculative novel from award-winning author Tanaïs about family secrets and the mother–daughter bond across generations—ultimately blurring the boundary between past and present, human and machine.

Qamar is a musician hustling in a near-future metropolitan city. Struggling to pay rent and heartbroken after a breakup, she decides to return to the island ashram of her childhood. It’s time to finally settle the rift she has with her estranged mother, Veda—a brilliant scientist, actress, and one of the leaders of a now-dissolved cult called the Endless Temple.

But when Qamar arrives, the land is verdant yet neglected, and, most troubling, there are no signs of her mother or sister, Palo. Behind a retina scan–locked door, Qamar encounters her mother’s last opus, a machine consciousness called VEDA (Virtual Experiences, Dreams and Afterlife), designed to reveal the story of Veda’s life. The descent into VEDA’s technoscape forces Qamar to confront the taboos and tragedies of their past, while bracing herself for the wild, unexpected possibilities that await.

"Sinopsis" puede pertenecer a otra edición de este libro.

Acerca del autor

Tanaïs (née Tanwi Nandini Islam) is a multidisciplinary artist, novelist, memoirist, and perfumer. They are the author of In Sensorium: Notes for My People, which won the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction, and offers an alternative history of South Asia through the lens of scent. Their critically acclaimed queer coming-of-age debut novel, Bright Lines, was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the Brooklyn Eagles Literary Prize. They studied at Vassar College and Brooklyn College, and founded the independent artisan perfume house Studio Tanaïs. Their writing and perfumes have been featured in Vogue, Vogue India, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, The Cut, The Nation, and more. They live in New York City with their husband, Mojo.

Fragmento. © Reproducción autorizada. Todos los derechos reservados.

Qamar knew no one at the party. She'd received an invitation to perform at a soirée of an old family friend, Luna, who wanted the illustrious characters in her world to hear Qamar's latest record, Psychedelic Sufi. Luna had caught an interview with Qamar on a public radio program and immediately sent her a voice note, panting from the treadmill at the gym. We'd love! To have you! Perform! At our party! Memorial Day weekend! It's been a minute, girl! Love you always! Qamar was fresh off a tour in Europe but didn't have enough for rent, having spent most of her money paying her musicians. Without Qamar asking, Luna offered her a thousand bucks. She would've said yes for free, but it sweetened the deal.

Back when Qamar had been a student at the conservatory, she'd lived with her Aunt Luna and Uncle Vaughn, interning during the summers at their indie film production company. But they hadn't seen each other in five years or so. There hadn't been a fight. They'd just slowly lost touch after the collapse of the ashram, the place where Luna and Vaughn had gotten married, where Qamar was born, and where her mother, whom none of them spoke to, still lived.

She wouldn't bring up the past, not tonight, and neither would they.

Music kept Qamar fed, and whenever gigs happened, they were often unplanned, serendipitous encounters that set bigger things in motion. It was far from anything that resembled a steady, successful career. Whatever. As long as Qamar made music, she had something that felt close enough. The whole Europe tour happened because she'd agreed to a residency at a friend's bar. On the last night, during her set, her eyes kept wandering to an incredibly hot woman in a black mesh dress who had long, slim braids with cowrie shells on the ends that rested on her collarbones. Afterwards, Qamar approached the woman, and before long, they were kissing, hungrily, in a dark corner lit by a disco ball, its leopardine light shimmering on their brown skin as trap music played. Qamar fingered Margaux under a corner table until she came, then grazed her wet fingers on the rim of her margarita and licked off the salt. That first night mellowed into friendship, which often happened with Qamar and femmes. Maybe it felt easier to maintain her preferred romantic distance with a masculine person, allowing her to reserve her energy for herself. But secretly, she longed for sisterhood more than a lover.

"We've got to get you to Europe," said Margaux. "They'll fall in love with you." Margaux proved invaluable as a friend, booking Qamar a handful of spring music festivals in Sweden and France. Qamar worried that her music-a hybrid of soul, Sufi qawwal, dream pop, and jazz-would be too strange and obscure to be popular with a European crowd, but Margaux told her to focus on doing what she loved, and that they would love her back. She was right. For the first time in her career, Qamar played for giant, mostly white audiences, though she never fully surrendered to their worship; it was impossible to ignore the refugee encampments just outside the metro stop.

Some nights, she and Margaux would hit up local jazz clubs. All the musicians were Black, lifelong friends of Margaux's father, an avant-garde drummer. Qamar noticed the love and reverence between the musicians, across generations, wishing that she belonged to their lineage, that their rhythms and traditions could be expressed so freely through her body. She so often felt like she belonged nowhere, to no one. Yet among them, she felt less like an outsider, or like the newly discovered ingénue. Music, a cosmic thing they channeled through spirit, moved down their spines, through their hands and tongues and feet, until everything else that marked them in this world fell away.


After getting Luna’s invite, Qamar spent two weeks hustling to pay for the night’s look: the Y2K Versace liquid-silver slip dress she’d eyed for the past month in her favorite vintage shop’s window, along with an expensive bottle of tequila. She lugged her harp up the stairs to the aboveground subway platform, which was visible from her bedroom window. From noon to sunset, she played ambient, spiritual sweeps that made her a hundred bucks on a good day. Each summer felt hotter than the last, and yesterday, it had been too fucking hot to busk outside. She walked ten minutes to the underground subway but barely made it an hour. Humid, stagnant air parched her throat. Her sweat-basted thighs and ass stained the canvas seat of her stool, making it look as if she’d pissed herself.

The only respite was the cool, stank wind of an oncoming train. She got on, just for the air-conditioning, and lazily strummed "You're All I Need to Get By" as the subway moved through the underwater tunnel. She made two dollars, because no one had cash on them. Cash passed through the hands of artists, gangsters, laborers, and the homeless; and while most people still preferred the detachment of plastic, some craved ease to such a high degree that they implanted Manus microchips to pay by palm. As soon as the train arrived at the last station, the rush-hour commuters packed the car to the gills. Qamar groaned. A boy started plucking strings with his grubby little fingers, and she smiled, wanly, until his mother swatted his hand away and said,그만해, a phrase she recognized from K-dramas. Mother and son disappeared into the swarm of people who exited just before Qamar's stop. She lived on the southeast side of the neighborhood, yet untouched by foreign investors laundering their money in real estate.

Ivy enveloped the face of the four-story building where Qamar lived, the only greenery that survived the pollution, the brick faded by bright southerly sun that woke her up every morning. She'd lived in this five-hundred-square-foot studio for the last several years-through lockdown and hurricane, war and wildflower smoke. Her neighbors kept mostly to themselves. During her morning meditation, she sat in the pyramid of sunlight cast on the floor and listened to the humdrum of the subway station. She heard the laughter of summer-camp kids en route to an adventure; by noon, the boomboxes of hip-hop dance crews practicing their routines, or the god-bless-yous of unhoused men she greeted by name. She bought food from the men who sold halal meat and rice, the lady with a cart of chili-covered mangoes or tamales or churros, fresher and cheaper than all the fast food down the street. A spate of robo-shops had popped up everywhere-they promised to fix a computer or 3D print a dinner or a three-tier cake, but drew the line at manufacturing cigarettes and alcohol. The shops were too expensive for most of the people in the neighborhood, and were seen as invasive, but in wealthier neighborhoods, people adapted readily to not dealing with humans. Qamar secretly was dying to try Tres Postres, a 3D printed cake shop, but refused on principle. She'd rather support the mom-and-pop joints owned by brown-skinned people that accepted cash and kept the community fed. The pervasive scent of fried food didn't bother her. We all die a little to live, she'd tell herself whenever she caved and ordered fries.

On the weekends, late at night, the train station became a queer party line, everyone hopped up on poppers and vibes. If she stayed out later than that and couldn't convince a cab to go all the way out to her address, she rode the train, with her house keys between her knuckles, no headphones, stony-faced and staring straight ahead. Just shy of dawn, the neighborhood morphed into an underworld. From her window, she might see drunk men pissing away a week's worth of pay onto the wall, or a couple fucking against it, or people strung out on drugs that bent them over in half. Everyone sought relief from what hurt them, doing whatever it took to finally fall asleep.

Qamar wheeled the harp to her apartment building and saw James, the unhoused man in a wheelchair who spent most of his days reading the Post, paper coffee cup in hand, usually filled with coins, though today he was actually drinking coffee. Beside him, all his earthly possessions-a half-dead houseplant, a blanket, and shopping bags stuffed with papers and a couple of empty cans to recycle for change. Dehydrated and worn out from lugging her instrument around, Qamar had the urge to cry seeing him. Everyone was trying so hard just to live.

"James, how's your day?"

"Summertime, baby, too damn hot," he said, shaking his head. "Listen-"

"Too. Damn. Hot." She handed him a twenty-dollar bill, and they both said, "God bless you."

She had a long cry in the shower, fixed herself a quesadilla, and suddenly, it was quarter to eight. Thirty minutes to rush to the vintage store before it closed, another hour on the train to get to Luna's. Thankfully, she wouldn't have to drag her harp uptown. Luna kept her late mother's harp in pristine condition-the same harp Qamar once practiced on. And this Versace dress cost more than half her rent. She paid half cash and put the rest on her credit card. She whispered, "Astaghfirullah," and released her breath when her card wasn't declined.


Qamar was slated to play at ten. No one had yet made eye contact with her. Was it because she was a stranger to them, invisible, or did she make them uncomfortable? She seemed to be the only person dressed sexy, or showing this much cleavage. Everyone wore designer but understated, with boxy, modest silhouettes. They knew they were there to do business. She realized that her neighborhood would be unlivable for most of these über-wealthy people. Whenever she felt out of place, she fixated on what people wore, compared their armor to hers, to better understand what kind of battle she’d gotten herself into. This felt almost like a professional networking thing, not some Illuminati meeting or artist’s salon, like she’d imagined. They were Black and brown, but they were rich. She did recognize a few of Luna and Vaughn’s director friends, as well as some actors, including a guy who’d been a hero in a Bollywood crossover flick. The actors huddled in a circle, laughing; a pretty-boy gang dressed in all black, leather jackets and tight jeans, as if it were fall instead of a sweltering summer night. The hero winked. Qamar hurried past them to make a cocktail with her unopened bottle of tequila. These Pinot Noir people couldn’t appreciate the good shit. She poured herself a glass. Where the hell was the ice?

"I'd love one of those," said a man's voice.

Reflexively, she scowled. Did she look like a fucking bottle service girl at the club? Before she snapped at the man, he dropped a massive cocktail ice cube into her glass. Tequila splashed down her cleavage. He stole a glance at the droplets and handed her a napkin to wipe herself off.

"Sorry," he said, as she said, "Thank you."

He was dressed head to toe in Boston Brahmin blues: oxford shirt, tight-fitting trousers, a blazer. Wasn't he melting? He was trim but not buff like the actors. His staid exterior mismatched his bearded, friendly face, a bit Saturnian, distinguished by large, long-lashed brown eyes and a prominent aquiline nose. He looked instantly familiar, as if she'd known him for years.

"That's a hell of a dress," he said, pouring himself a tequila soda.

Qamar's immediate thought was that she'd wasted the dress on this party. But she held her tongue and thanked him.

"Darlings! Hello, gorgeous, hello, gorgeous," said Luna, popping in between them and kissing their cheeks. "My god, Ajay, have you heard Qamar sing before? Oh shit, I got you guys." Luna roughly wiped the traces of her red lipstick from their faces. Her lips and fingers smelled like cigarettes. Qamar craved one but decided she'd treat herself after her set.

"They sound like an angel," said Ajay.

"Oh! Thank you," said Qamar, again. Surprised, she blinked a few times, realizing he was neither a businessman nor a tech bro. He was the novelist Ajay Anand. And somehow, he knew her, without assuming her pronouns, which were, in fact, she and they.

How could she not have recognized him? She'd recently watched a long interview with him. Here he was, in the flesh. Like her, he'd been estranged from parents who disapproved of his art. They hated his novels for exposing their family's secrets, especially after he'd won a major award for an autofictive novel that depicted a tyrannical father. After his father's death, he planned a family trip to visit his ancestral village, but just before the trip, his four-year-old son contracted meningitis and permanently lost his hearing. His mother died soon after. Broken by intense grief, Ajay took ten years to finish his next novel. He kept writing to accept that he could change nothing but himself.

His story had dislodged an old sorrow. Qamar had never known her real father, and her mother lived an ocean away. They had hardly spoken since Qamar left home for the city to be a musician, or, as her mother phrased it, a glorified whore.

"I-I loved your last book," Qamar stammered.

Ajay smiled. His last book had been savagely panned. Overwrought and sentimental, his critics said, his verbose tomes had fallen out of fashion in an era of waning attention spans. His meteoric literary rise tapered into a tenured professorship at the city's most prestigious university, affording him a town house along the river. At forty-five, he could stand disparagement by strangers; he'd much rather have the attention of his own people, artists.

Luna grabbed Qamar's hands in hers and led them to the crown jewel of the living room: a tiger-striped, rosewood-inlaid Lyon & Healy harp, a towering beauty, double the size of her own instrument. Uncle Vaughn said a few pithy words and everyone clapped before gathering round Qamar, who sat on a cushioned stool. People suddenly seemed interested in her, a swarm gathered on the sofa, the rug; people stood wherever they found space. Someone dimmed the lights. Qamar took one more swig of her cocktail, adjusted the mic, and thanked the same people who'd ignored her all night. She saw Ajay, who stood all the way at the back of the room.

Qamar closed their eyes.

As soon as the first note of the ghazal left their lips, they felt at ease. They'd known this song almost as long as they'd known their mother tongue; it was the first song their ustad had taught them. What a strange thing, touching such a precious instrument. The resonance of strings echoed through the room. Sound filled the hollow places in their body, the closest feeling they knew to worship. Their hypnotic voice curled around the room like smoke. When they finished, everyone released their breath, stunned, until finally, someone clapped, like the crackle of thunder before rain broke the summer heat. Then everyone started clapping. Qamar opened their eyes. There he was, looking at her. Ajay cocked his head, ever so slightly, toward the exit.

"Sobre este título" puede pertenecer a otra edición de este libro.

Editorial
Dutton
Año de publicación
2026
Idioma
Inglés
ISBN 10 
0593852850
ISBN 13 
9780593852859
Encuadernación
Tapa dura
Número de páginas
320
Contacto del fabricante
no disponible
Persona responsable
no disponible