The Tiniest House of Time

Praise for The Tiniest House of Time

'The historical background of this book is complex and fascinating, as is the story of these two women's lives as they negotiate dilemmas around culture, religion, and race.'

— The Sydney Morning Herald

'Sreedhevi Iyer's The Tiniest House of Time is a book for our time, examining as it does the profound silences that a family lives with, silences embedded in a history of displacement, and the uprooting from what was considered home. In tracking hidden and unspoken histories, of which there is little written record, the author has written something of a psychoanalytically focused and politically acute narrative, as she explores through her finely structured novel, an evocation of generational trauma across migratory continental space. With much sensitivity and intelligence, Iyer delineates the colonial legacy of race relations, and how this legacy weighs down on those societies still navigating them.'

— Mascara Literary Review

‘The Tiniest House of Time is an intriguing weave of cultures and politics spanning almost a century. It details self-serving colonialists, corrupt and merciless governments and terrifying sectarian violence. But it is first and foremost a love story, chiefly between grandmother and granddaughter but also delineating their respective forays into relationships both platonic and passionate. Sreedhevi Iyer’s prose is delicate. She writes in a voice replete with profound understanding and compassion, bringing to life the various periods and characters which inhabit and people her narrative. At the same time, in her dramatic yarn-spinning, she has created the sort of remarkable momentum that compels readers to keep turning the pages until they reach the last of them. Iyer has taken us on a unique journey. Its words, the lives and the times they evoke will be difficult to forget.‘ 

— Yvonne Fein, author

‘The ever-shifting sands of people and place: who we are and where, are deftly explored by Sreedhevi Iyer in this insightful and charming novel. With sensitivity and subtly, Iyer explores the many shades of the universal 'I'. No-one has a single, fixed identity, rather we slip between worlds and between roles. How does one reconcile the different people we all are, in different places, in different times, with different people? And what does it mean to know another from the isolation of our own 'multi-verse'? Susheela and Sandhya are two peas in a pod, grandmother and grand-daughter, they share everything: the same birthdate, the same stars, a connection "on a level quite inexplicable". But everyone has secrets... ‘

— Ben Doherty, journalist and author

‘The Indian Diaspora has spread across the world, carrying within each family stories and secrets that remain hidden unless prodded by circumstances. In Sreedhevi Iyer's novel The Tiniest House of Time, pre-war Burma and post-colonial Malaysia form the bookends of a family saga that brings together a grandmother with stories not yet shared and a granddaughter keen to find and assert herself. Stories that grandmothers tell their grandchildren are meant to comfort and pacify, but as Sandhya Sastri and her grandmother Susheela begin their journey, they make discoveries that shift from the personal to the political, the individual to the collective, and what's not been told and what must be said. ‘

—Salil Tripathi, writer and journalist

The Tiniest House of Time covers the sacking of Anwar Ibrahim in 1998 and the consequent riots, and also a lost history of an unknown exodus of Indians from Burma to India when Rangoon was bombed by the Japanese in 1941. Told from the point of view of two young women of their time, it touches on what we let go, and how, when we face death.

More from Sreedhevi Iyer:

Watch the feature on the Inspirational Women Online Showcase, and watch the event with Jamie Marina Lau at the Emerging Writers Festival 2019.

Read the review in Books+Publishing and the In Conversation with The Small Press Network