4. See full question inside comment

[Jen]

2. The first evening that Sai was at Cho Oyu, “she had a fearful feeling of having entered a space so big it reached both backward and forward” (p. 34). Discuss this observation. Could this be a description of the novel itself?

[[deleted user]]

I would say it relates most to the judge and the cook both of whom are looking back at their pasts and also looking to the future in terms of the next generation. It also relates to the Gorkhas who are looking back at how they have been treated in the past and demanding a better future.

[John]

No idea. I didn't have any idea what Desai meant when I read this and it hasn't grown any clearer with time.

[Pip]

It reached back to the time when it was a newly built luxury house for the Scotsman and forward to its decline into disrepair and vulnerability. It was a house that was no longer a sanctuary. Maybe it was a metaphor for India, too.