Vartalaap, in association with Bookbots India, presents an Intimate Virtual Conversation with Sonia Bahl Around Eighteen Inches Apart
Some books do not leave you immediately after you finish reading them. Their people linger. Their cities remain alive somewhere in memory. Their silences continue to echo quietly in the background of ordinary days.
Sonia Bahl’s fiction inhabits exactly this emotional terrain.
At the first gathering of Vartalaap — Conversations That Stay — we invite readers into the deeply human and emotionally layered world of Eighteen Inches Apart, Bahl’s latest novel exploring loneliness, grief, fleeting encounters, memory, and the invisible threads that quietly bind distant lives together.
Moving between Calcutta and London, across strangers, years, and emotional landscapes, Eighteen Inches Apart is a tender exploration of romantic, platonic, and familial love and the mysterious ways lives continue to intersect long after brief encounters have passed.
Bahl’s writing has often returned to people standing at emotional crossroads: strangers on flights, cities carrying memory like weather, relationships shaped by timing, distance, and longing. Her previous novels, A Year of Wednesdays and The Spectacular Miss, similarly explored intimacy, identity, urban loneliness, and the enduring impact of human connection with warmth, wit, and emotional precision.
Readers and critics alike have described her storytelling as cinematic, intimate, and deeply resonant. One reader compared the emotional world of her books to the Before Sunrise trilogy , where conversation itself becomes movement, intimacy, and transformation.
The evening will include:
- a live conversation with Sonia Bahl,
- reflections on writing and emotional memory,
- a shared reading from the book,
- and audience interaction and discussion.
Designed as an intimate virtual literary gathering, the session is part of Vartalaap, a curated literary conversation initiative exploring books, language, storytelling, and meaningful dialogue in digital spaces.
Event Details
📅 4 July 2026
⏰ 5 PM IST
📍 Zoom
Free to attend | Registration mandatory
Because some conversations stay.
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