Bramah’s Quest

The ambitious second instalment of Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s epic fantasy saga in verse, The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns (THOT J BAP). This book-length poem features the time-travelling demigoddess Bramah, a locksmith and the saga’s hero. In Bramah’s Quest, the year is 2087 and Bramah is back on a planet Earth ravaged by climate change and global inequality. Bramah is on a quest to find her people, including the little boy Raphael, last seen at the end of Bramah and the Beggar Boy (2021). Hailed as “brilliant and masterful, timely” (Kerry Gilbert), this long poem reclaims poetry forms such as blank verse, the sonnet, the ballad and the madrigal. Each page is a portal, connecting readers to the resistance of seed savers, craftspeople, scientists and orphans, all banded together to help save their world from eco-catastrophe and injustice. Ten years in the making, Bramah’s Quest weaves poetry with politics to create an epic family saga that is also a meditation on good and evil and a “real page turner” (Meredith Quartermain). Bramah, “brown, brave and beautiful,” is determined to conquer the odds and deal with what fate and chance throw in her path. Each twist and turn tests her ability to live up to the motto “Let all evil die and the good endure.”