“Human realities exist within a dualistic framework of pain and pleasure. Both rest against a circular continuum, and there’s a point where pain and pleasure meet at their greatest and most unbearable intensity.”
- NISH AMARNATH, BLACK ORCHID (formerly titled TWIN FLAME)
BOOK TEASER | NOT A LOVE STORY
THE BOOK
During her near-death experience as a child, Sherry sees a face that urges her to return to life. When she moves to London fourteen years later, she meets an aspiring writer, Shaddy whose appearance reminds her of the visage she had seen during her near-death experience. Their otherworldly connection urges Sherry to resume work on a mathematical model that could help restore malfunctioning immune systems, reversing autoimmunity in millions of people. Alas, circumstances wrench Sherry and Shaddy apart.
Sherry reluctantly marries a lawyer and lands in New York City, where she scrambles to pick up the vestiges of her shelved research dream and realizes that she and Shaddy are still drawn to each other. However, Sherry is unable to leave her marriage when she is laid off. Consequently, she loses the health insurance she needs for a medicine that keeps her alive. Her search for answers takes her down a rabbit hole where she realizes she may have been scammed by a psychic. Meanwhile, Shaddy must come to terms with the emotional deprivation he has experienced as an abused foster child, since losing his family at thirteen...if he and Sherry are to find their purpose…and their way back to each other.
A South Asian mathematician's near-death experience and her otherworldly connection with an Austrian-Jewish writer mark the beginning of a search to cure autoimmune diseases on a journey toward the Nobel Prize and beyond.
SEESAW | Musical Representation of BLACK ORCHID (formerly TWIN FLAME)
Black Orchid explores the impact of the mind-body connection on a growing autoimmune disease epidemic against the backdrop of a schism on globalization and protectionism, spanning four decades.
Weaving through a spectrum of landscapes from industrial Karachi, middle-class Delhi and postwar Germany to upscale London and contemporary New York, this interracial drama with elements of magical realism unfolds a tapestry of evolving discourses on race, gender, sexuality, disability, and mental health, illuminating the power of love, courage, and self-determination to spur action for the greater good of humankind.
The black orchid has various symbolisms. It is a rare, exotic and enigmatic flower that exists in parts of Asia, Central America and South America.
The black orchid is sometimes believed to be an epitome of resilience, strength, grace, inner power, creativity, imagination, and the capacity of light to eclipse darkness and fear. It represents the kind of love that urges us to believe, stay real and step into the biggest version of ourselves.
I hope you'll enjoy reading BLACK ORCHID as much as I enjoyed creating and writing it! If you’re hooked to this story, you might also like to check out my music, art and poetry series, BOND OF TWIN FLAMES.
Represented by FinePrint Literary Management NYC and TGS Literary Agency
NORTH AMERICA | UK + COMMONWEALTH | EUROPE
Contact: lauren@fineprintlit.com | namrata@theglass-slipper.com
©2022. Nish Amarnath. All rights reserved.