Book launch: We of the Forsaken World by Kiran Bhat
Event Information
About this Event
About the book
In a distant corner of the globe, a man journeys to the birthplace of his mother, a tourist town destroyed by an industrial spill. In a nameless remote tribe, the chief’s second son is born, creating a scramble for succession as their jungles are being destroyed by loggers. In one of the world’s sprawling metropolises, a homeless one-armed woman sets out to take revenge upon the men who trafficked her. And, in a small village of shanty shacks connected only by a mud-and- concrete road, a milkmaid watches the girls she calls friends destroy her reputation.
"We of the Forsaken World…" (Iguana Books, 2020) is structured as a linguistic chain comprising the accounts of 16 people, connected along subtle lines, who indirectly witness four narratively and geographically diverse central storylines. The story flows and recombines like digital connectivity, throwing into question pre-21st century assumptions about narrative logic, embodying the way in which modern communication unites this planet every second, everywhere.
About the author
Indian-American polyglot, traveler, and writer Kiran Bhat has visited 132 countries, lived in 18 pockets of the planet, and picked up 12 languages. His life of travel and eternal wandering is a result of his desire to create a literature of globalisation, something which pushes us beyond our concepts of borders and forces the reader from a structural perspective to think globally. "We of the Forsaken World" is his first English-language book of fiction to be published. Kiran currently lives in Melbourne, pursuing a postgrad degree at the University of Melbourne.
Kiran's other books include the Spanish-language poetry collection Autobiografia (Letrame Editorial, 2019) and the Mandarin-language poetry collection Kiran Speaks (White Elephant Press, 2019), as well as the Kannada-language travelogue Tirugaatha (Chiranthana Media Solutions, 2019).
Online option
Anyone who would prefer to view this event online can do so via the following Zoom link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84768437706?pwd=UHowb3NRZ2lDYXhPdkZybDJmWXZPQT09