TEMPORARY PEOPLE

Deepak Unnikrishnan

This novel is made up of a series of connected stories that explore the precarious lives of migrant workers in the Gulf. Unnikrishnan’s family is from Kerala, but he was raised in the United Arab Emirates and then studied in the United States. He writes in the comic and absurdist traditions of both English and Malayalam, echoing Vaikom Muhammad Basheer as much as Kurt Vonnegut. The novel was published by Restless Books in the United States last year, after it won the publishing house’s contest for New Immigrant Writing.

Simon & Schuster India, 272 pages, Rs 399