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Sign up todayThe Most Precious Substance on Earth
Narrator
Meher Pavri
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Length
8 hours 33 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“The Most Precious Substance on Earth is the humorous and heartbreaking story of Nina, a Canadian daughter of Indian immigrants. Her story begins in her first year of high school where she plays in the band, reads Beowulf to impress her English teacher on whom she has a crush, chats with an online predator, and spends all of her time with her best friend Amy. Following a traumatic incident that she keeps secret from even Amy, we watch the rest of her life unfold, influenced always by this event. Her loving parents introduce her to suitable Indian men, pray for her, and support her in all she does. Bhat masterfully weaves humor into this disturbing story of the secrets women often keep and their long-lasting effects. Nina will long stay with me, her story leaving me angry and sad, spurred to act for a different future.”
— Nancy • Raven Book Store
Journey Prize winner Shashi Bhat’s "powerful, surprising and terrifying" (Rufi Thorpe) story about a high school student's traumatic experience and how it irrevocably alters her life, for fans of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Girlhood, and Pen15.
Bright, hilarious, and sensitive fourteen-year-old Nina spends her spare time reading Beowulf and flirting with an internet predator. She has a vicious crush on her English teacher, and her best friend Amy is slowly drifting away. Meanwhile, Nina’s mother tries to match her up with local Indian boys unfamiliar with her Saved by the Bell references, and Nina’s worried father has started reciting Hindu prayers outside her bedroom door. Beginning with a disturbing incident at her high school, The Most Precious Substance on Earth tells stories of Nina’s life from the ‘90s to present day, when she returns to the classroom as a high school teacher with a haunting secret and discovers that the past is never far behind her.
Darkly funny, deeply affecting, unsettling, and at times even shocking, Shashi Bhat’s irresistible novel-in-stories examines the relationships between those who take and those who have something taken. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is a sharp-edged and devastating look at how women are conditioned to hide their trauma and suppress their fear, loneliness, and anger, and an unforgettable portrait of how silence can shape a life.
Shashi Bhat’s fiction has won the Writers’ Trust / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her stories have appeared in such publications as The Threepenny Review, The Missouri Review, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, subTerrain, Best Canadian Stories 2018 and 2019, and The Journey Prize Stories 24 and 30. Her debut novel, The Family Took Shape, was a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Shashi holds an MFA in fiction from the Johns Hopkins University. She lives in New Westminster, BC, where she is the editor-in-chief of EVENT magazine and teaches creative writing at Douglas College.