Ties that bind and cuts that tear--views of a world not totally forsaken after all!

February 17, 2020

I'm delighted to be one of the hosts for the "We of the Forsaken" book tour today, and delighted also to be a reader of the book.

Reminiscent of Ursula LeGuin’s Malafrena, We of the Forsaken World both creates and recreates our world in the realm of people other than ourselves. From primitive tribe to modern betrayal, from human need to foresight and mysticism, from the voices of believable people to the gathered voice of life, the stories pull the reader in. Uncannily disconcerting with their separate worlds, intriguingly connected with poems that blend one character into the next, universal in their overwhelming humanity, and absorbing with their very human trials and tribulations, the stories each make the reader stop and think differently, see through different eyes, and accept the unity that binds us. A forsaken world perhaps, but there’s a harmony to these stories and characters that reveals one world, seen with “the eyes of the eternal.”

We of the Forsaken World is lyrically told, sparely described, hauntingly envisioned, and a really haunting read.

Disclosure: I was given a copy as a host for this tour, and I offer my honest review. I love this book!

WE OF THE FORSAKEN WORLD
By Kiran Bhat
Literary Fiction/Metaphysical Fiction

The Internet has connected – and continues to connect – billions of 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.

In we 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.

Like modern communication 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.

As Bhat notes, his characters “largely live their own lives, deal 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.”

Bhat continues: “I wanted 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.”

“These are stories that could be directly ripped from our 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.”

we of the forsaken world takes pride of place next to such notable literary works as 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.

Bhat’s epic also stands comfortably with the works of contemporary visionaries such as Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick.

Amazon → https://amzn.to/2DQIclm

Barnes & Noble → https://bit.ly/2Lqe9Fi

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TEASER

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EXCERPT

“My people. Now speaks the man destined to 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.”

Not a single man found it in himself to raise 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.

(Bhat, we, of the forsaken world… p. 191)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kiran Bhat was born in Jonesboro, Georgia to parents from villages in 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.