Mad Sisters of Esi

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?

Author: Tashan Mehta
Publisher: Daw Books
Published: 08/05/2025
Pages: 432
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.27lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.60w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780756420062


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/30/2025
Booklist 08/01/2025
Shelf Awareness 08/16/2025

About the Author
Tashan Mehta's Mad Sisters of Esi was published by HarperCollins India in 2023 and won the AutHer Awards for Best Novel. Her debut novel, The Liar's Weave, was published in 2017 and shortlisted for the Prabha Khaitan Woman's Voice Award. Her short fiction has been anthologized in Magical Women, the Gollancz Anthology of South Asian Science Fiction: Volume II and Solarpunk Creatures. She was fellow at the 2015 and 2021 Sangam House International Writers' Residency, India, and writer-in-residence at Anglia Ruskin University, UK, and has mentored at numerous writing residencies. She studied at the universities of Warwick and Cambridge, and currently resides in Mumbai.