Asha Of the Air: Book Melds Western and South Asian Influences
India-West Staff Reporter
LOS ANGELES, CA – In filmmaker and novelist John Huddles’ new tale, the last daughter of an ancient house breaks from the abusive prince that she married at the age of 17, thinking he would save her from her troubles, before making an epic trek of body and mind to acquire self-knowledge and gain agency over her own life.
The previews have been widely appreciative as a blend of Western and South Asian influences. A mix of legend, adventure and spiritual exploration, ‘Asha Of The Air’ interweaves European chivalric tradition and the teachings of sacred Hindu texts to craft a brilliantly immersive world where fantasy and science, history and myth combine to form a tale of intense emotionality.
Asha’s story is strikingly relevant to the way that today, in 2022, we are renegotiating the balance of power between the sexes and learning how to reconcile the urge to dominate with the need to love.
The story begins in the far future, in a city levitating among the clouds. Here a translator of ancient languages casts his mind down to the surface of a long uninhabited earth and six thousand years into the past to tell the tale of Asha, a possibly mythical, possibly factual princess, or Raajakumaaree in the language of her era.
When Asha’s life of beauty and privilege, the compensation for her poisonous marriage, ultimately comes undone, it sets her on an epic yaatra, a journey into the actual as well as psychological wilderness. Along the way she must imagine a path beyond the totality of her past mistakes — before hope itself comes to an end.
Huddles is a screenwriter, film director and novelist. His writing career began as editor-in-chief of Brown University’s student magazine, and as one of Brown’s first-ever Undergraduate Writing Fellows. He is also a graduate of the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and The American Film Institute Conservatory in Los Angeles.
The book is being released by Notable Publishing on Apr.26, a press release said.
