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Steeped in the living of rupture, the strength and fragmentation of memory, and the layering of life and art-making, Night Heron weaves together two parallel stories of women artists. Twenty-first century Bengali-American artist, Pakhi, floats through the world on a non-quest that takes her to New York City, Berlin, and Bujumbura; nineteenth century Bengali writer, Mrinalini, lives in a joint family home in a declining Lucknow, persistently finding time and space to write. At the heart of the novel is Pakhi’s choice to leave her son, an uneasy decision that is mirrored in Mrinalini’s ambivalence regarding her own education and what doors are opened and possibly closed for herself and her children as a result of it.
