Paperback, 442 pages
English language
Published Aug. 5, 2025 by DAW.
Susanna Clarke's Piranesi meets Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler in this stunning meta fantasy about the power of stories, belief, and sisterhood
Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung flees, beginning an adventure that will spin her through dreams, memories, and myths
Ask for the story of the mad sisters of Esi, and you’ll get a thousand contradictory folktales. Superstitious sailors, curious children, and obsessed academics have argued over the particulars for generations. They have wondered about the mad sisters’ two greatest marvels: the museum of collective memory that sprawls underneath our universe, waiting for any who call for it, and the living, impossible, whale of babel.
Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak folktales of themselves, and pray to their …
Susanna Clarke's Piranesi meets Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler in this stunning meta fantasy about the power of stories, belief, and sisterhood
Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung flees, beginning an adventure that will spin her through dreams, memories, and myths
Ask for the story of the mad sisters of Esi, and you’ll get a thousand contradictory folktales. Superstitious sailors, curious children, and obsessed academics have argued over the particulars for generations. They have wondered about the mad sisters’ two greatest marvels: the museum of collective memory that sprawls underneath our universe, waiting for any who call for it, and the living, impossible, whale of babel.
Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel. They roam within its cosmic chambers, speak folktales of themselves, and pray to their creator, the Great Wisa. For Laleh, this is everything. For Myung, it is not enough.
When Myung flees the whale, she stumbles into a new universe full of people, shapeshifting islands, and argumentative ghosts. In her search for Great Wisa and her longing for her sister Laleh, Myung sets off on an adventure that will unravel the mystery that has confounded everyone for centuries: the truth about the mad sisters of Esi.
Fables, dreams and myths come together in a masterful work of fantasy full of wonder and awe, that asks: in the devastating chaos of the world, where all is in flux, and the truth is ever-changing, what will you choose to hold on to? And what stories will you choose to tell?
Very much a my bullshit book, a mess of fairy tales and memory and love and mistakes, written beautifully
Life feels like it's been absolutely off the charts lately. Some of that is, of course, because of what's going on globally in politics. But on the other side, is that I've simply been rather unwell since the middle of May. So even though I got the arc for this book from NetGalley many months ago, it's come down to the wire when it comes to actually reading it and getting out my review. But maybe that was actually for the best? Somehow it feels like it was exactly the right time to read this absolutely incredible story by Tashan Mehta.
Mad Sisters of Esi starts by talking about how time and stories are circular rather than linear, and I think that both within the world of the novel and in real life, that this is true. While I do think that the sometimes mundane nature of modern life …
Life feels like it's been absolutely off the charts lately. Some of that is, of course, because of what's going on globally in politics. But on the other side, is that I've simply been rather unwell since the middle of May. So even though I got the arc for this book from NetGalley many months ago, it's come down to the wire when it comes to actually reading it and getting out my review. But maybe that was actually for the best? Somehow it feels like it was exactly the right time to read this absolutely incredible story by Tashan Mehta.
Mad Sisters of Esi starts by talking about how time and stories are circular rather than linear, and I think that both within the world of the novel and in real life, that this is true. While I do think that the sometimes mundane nature of modern life in a globally connected place space and time may feel linear, it's my view that time is certainly far more circular than most of us have the power to contemplate.
But the fact that we often perceive our time as incredibly linear is what I think lends this story some of its power. We travel through the black sea alongside all of the numerous characters that take shape within the narrative. We are also looking for our sister. We are also looking for the whale of babel. And while we go on that journey together with these characters, much like the characters, time loops around over and over again. We jump forward and backward and sideways in both directions. The reading experience is incredible and I'm not sure that I was expecting to feel this level of catharsis by the time I reached the end.
I love stories that play with character perspective and time in interesting ways, and Mad Sisters of Esi does those things. The author has crafted a situation actually where there isn't even really an end. Because even for us, with the time that we process as linear, death isn't just an end—for some people, it's not an end at all—it's also a beginning.
What an absolutely wonderful novel. I highly recommend it. I am in absolute awe.
