WE OF THE FORSAKEN WORLD
By Kiran Bhat
Literary Fiction/Metaphysical Fiction
people around the world, sometimes in surprising ways. In his sprawling new
novel, we of the forsaken world, author Kiran Bhat has turned the fact of that
once-unimaginable connectivity into a metaphor for life itself.
of the forsaken world, Bhat follows the fortunes
of 16 people who live in four distinct places on the planet. The gripping
stories include those of a man’s journey to the birthplace of his mother, a
tourist town destroyed by an industrial spill; a chief’s second son born in a
nameless remote tribe, creating a scramble for succession as their jungles are
destroyed by loggers; a homeless, one-armed woman living in a sprawling
metropolis who sets out to take revenge on the men who trafficked her; and a
milkmaid in a small village of shanty shacks connected only by a mud and
concrete road who watches the girls she calls friends destroy her reputation.
networks, the stories in, we of the forsaken world connect along subtle lines, dispersing at the moments
where another story is about to take place. Each story is a parable unto
itself, but the tales also expand to engulf the lives of everyone who lives on
planet Earth, at every second, everywhere.
with their own problems, and exist independently of the fact that they inhabit
the same space. This becomes a parable of globalization, but in a literary
text.”
to imagine a globalism, but one that was bottom-to-top, and using globalism to
imagine new terrains, for the sake of fiction, for the sake of humanity’s
intellectual growth.”
headlines. I think each of these stories is very much its own vignette, and
each of these vignettes gives a lot of insight into human nature, as a whole.”
David Mitchell’s CLOUD ATLAS, a
finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize for 2004, and Mohsin Hamid’s EXIT WEST, which was listed by the New
York Times as one of its Best Books of 2017.
visionaries such as Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick.
INTERVIEW
- What is on your nightstand?
Since I am a traveler, my nightstand changes every few weeks to a month, but at the moment, on the nightstand I am next to, there is a lamp, a green folder, and a copy of Parade’s End Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford. Am not trying to stan that book, by the way. It just happens to be the one I am reading right now.
- What author would you totally fan?
Not Ford Madox Ford (Just kidding, A Good Soldier is quite good). I would probably go for either Tolstoy, Melville, or Vyasa, but since Vyasa is an argued imagined writer representing the ideas of a period, I might have to go for one of the other two.
- What makes you cringe?
Stupid people? Though, I suppose that itself is something to be analyzed. Things that we often assume are stupid are igniting some sort of trauma or anguish inside of us, and if we reflect on what that is, and let go of it, often what we deem as stupid or cringeworthy leaves our soul.
- Do you obsessively plot out each point or just go with the flow?
A mix of both, but I think since my books are very intricate in structure, I think plotting is very important.
TEASER
EXCERPT
make the great cats bow to feet, now speaks the man who will lock eyes with the
sun. I have found our new land. Take your canoes and follow me. A new time for
our tribe has come.”
a weapon, nor did a single wife open her mouth. The eyes of the eternal shone
not from the skull but from the eyes of our chief’s first son. We believed that
the spirits had bestowed him with our future. He had the eyes of life and death
and life once more.
191)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dakshina Kannada, India. An avid world traveler, polyglot, and digital
nomad, he has currently traveled to more than 130 countries, lived in 18
different places, and speaks 12 languages. He currently lives in
Melbourne, Australia.
Website → http://iguanabooks.ca/
