Spirit Nights

"A rich festival of storytelling - playful, poignant and profound. Easterine Kire reimagines marvels for new audiences, shining fresh light on ancient wisdom and revealing truths that have united humanity for centuries. A beautiful read." - Ann Morgan, author of Reading Around the World

"To read Easterine Kire is to fall under the spell of an easeful, velvety, pitch-perfect storytelling. Spirit Nights brings together the lull of fable, the revelation of allegory, the vitality of folklore and the intimacy of the familial in a manner that is distinctly Kire. This book is especially memorable for a powerful female protagonist whose age-ripened wisdom is needed to save a community on the verge of being engulfed and erased by darkness." - Gayathri Prabhu

"Kire presents a multidimensional world of seers, dreams and prophecies." - The Morning Star

"Spirit Nights is a story of how the moral balance of community life is made up of delicate elements, and how easily it can get disturbed by seemingly meaningless thoughts and actions. It succeeds in infusing life into a mythological tale of light and darkness, and should be read for its masterful humanising of the didactic." - Scroll.In

"A nuanced evocation of the Naga world in all its exuberant magnificence as it uncovers bit by bit, the marrow of Naga life. Spirit Nights uses its encounter with the magical to explore the themes of haunting, love and loss, betrayal and loyalty, and tribe and community while it simmers in an alchemy of the visual and the verbal." - East Mojo

"[Spirit Nights] is a complex exploration and critique of traditional Naga culture and the roles its men and women play. From its opening pages, Spirit Nights transports you to a time period often overlooked and spins a tale of village community life, of family and loyalty, of fear and death and of the triumph of becoming the person you were always meant to be. It is a marvellous tale, gracefully told in language as beautiful as the myth that inspired it. Interspersed throughout the main storyline which alternates between the perspectives of two main protagonists (Tola, dream receiver, descended from a long line of seers and her grandson Namu, destined warrior hero), are other perspectives, other stories: tales from the Chang Naga myths and legends, particularly of a time when an all-encompassing darkness covered the surface of the earth lasting for days and days on end. There are fireside tales about doomed lovers, cautionary tales involving mighty warriors who foolishly disregard their seers and accounts of spirit carvers entwined with the story of two brothers who set out to right a wrong done to their mother: these are stories- within- story- characteristic of all oral storytelling traditions. Each tale and each account provides invaluable insight to the novel, adding layers of colour to an incredibly well-researched and well-developed world." - Morung Express