Easterine Kire’s When the River Sleeps: A Perspective

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a large scale proliferation of Indian English fiction across continents and cultures. Today, it spread to the North-East India too. Writers from the North-East have gained mainstream recognition. One such writer is Easterine Kire. Her novel “When the River Sleeps” wins the 2015 The Hindu Literary prize. It is a great work of art that tells the story of Vilie, an Angari man in Nagaland, who is obsessed with the sleeping river and the magical stone it contains beneath the water. Viliee sets out an epic journey in the quest for the stone, encountering men and spirits.
Kire‟s aim in the novel is not to narrate an adventure story, but to chart a man‟s journey from ignorance to experience. What matters more is inexplicable natural world that hovers at the edge of human experience, where wisdom extracts its cost. The present article is an attempt to discuss the techniques and other aspects employed by the writer.