Mountain Leopard Press is a new imprint of Welbeck Publishing Group, founded by Christopher MacLehose. Over the years, I’ve come to associate his name with quality, so I was keen to see what Mountain Leopard would publish. 

The Earthspinner is one of their first titles, the latest novel (and the first I’ve read) by Anuradha Roy. In 1970s India, Elango is a potter who has fallen in love with Zohra. After dreaming of a horse from myth, he resolves to spin it in clay for her. The problem is that Elango is a Hindu and Zohra a Muslim, so their love is forbidden. 

Our other protagonist is Sarayu. Elango taught her pottery when she was younger, and she rediscovers her love for it at university in England. The Earthspinner is an elegant tale of how pottery helps open the world up to Sarayu, even as we see Elango’s world grow more precarious. 

Mountain Leopard’s other launch title is Beirut 2020: The Collapse of a Civilization, a Journal by Charif Majdalani (tr. Ruth Dover), a stark account of events in the Lebanese capital last year.