Until August, Countries of Origin and the Passengers of the Time Train
Literary novels are refugees of a time in the past, escaping to the future to tell forgotten and forgiven stories; to tell the realities of the people inhabiting these lands, and their woes and dilemmas. And curiously, also to uncover the stories behind those narratives — how they came into being. These past few weeks, two novels captured my attention for very different reasons.
I received the news of the publication of Gabriel García Márquez’s Until August, against his explicit instruction that the manuscript be destroyed, and a decade after his death, with mixed sentiments. In the face of the obvious betrayal, and the argument that readers deserved to read more of his writing irrespective of the circumstances, I was curious to follow it up. The Guardian reported that Gonzalo García Barcha conceded that it was “hard to go against the grain” of his father’s wishes, but insisted that there were “plenty of examples in the history of literature of people who are requested to destroy manuscripts, and then they turn out to be important items in literature. For me personally, it’s a relief in the sense that this is actually the last piece Gabo wrote. I feel that his complete works would be unfinished if this wasn’t published. There are no other novels hiding around in Gabo’s papers.”
Until August was released on March 6, 2024 on what would have been the master’s 97th birthday. Readers worldwide expected the work to broaden the scope of Gabo’s brand of magic realism even further. It was great news for writers from Latin America and other less famous parts of the globe, particularly because Gabo’s work “(helped) to include those parts of the world less often familiar to the centre of the literary universe,” as the writer Pico Iyer puts it. Over 250 thousand copies were preordered in Latin America. In Colombia, the book was the third most sold novel in the week before its release. For me, the book’s release, notwithstanding the controversy around it, was in essence of a story outliving not only its creator, but that of his intentions, and thus telling a future readership the story of his vision in the past.
The second such novel was Countries of Origins. This week, PEN America made news headlines after several nominees (and winners) withdrew from their annual literary event scheduled to be held in New York. For those uninitiated, since the past sixty years, PEN America’s Literary Awards Ceremony has honored creators and works of the most outstanding voices in literature across diverse genres. In 2023, PEN America conferred over $350,000 to writers and translators. This year, it was decided that winners who had not withdrawn would still receive their cash prizes and in categories in which the selected author had withdrawn, no winners would be announced. Only two winners were named: Countries of Origin, by Javier Fuentes, won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut novel; Patty Crane won the award for poetry in translation, for The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer.
Countries of Origin chronicles an intense love affair between two young men from vastly different worlds during an extraordinary summer in Spain. I am again at crossroads (and I say this without any biases) to decode Javier’s decision not to withdraw from the Award and his stance on the whole issue, particularly when his debut novel is said to be “a meditation on identity, class, belonging and desire”, and again has been criticized as “the characters are immune to meaningful consequences to their actions.” The novel is set in 2007. It is thus, to me, an escapee from the past. Ironically, in its moment of glory, it was in the middle of sad circumstances that are also a legacy of the past.
Meanwhile, this week I decided to make my stand public about how badly India needs to reform the way it looks at flash fiction, my favorite category, and by far one of the fastest growing segments among international readers. I thought I owed it, as a predominantly flash fiction writer (though I have recently completed, surprisingly, a 94,000-words literary novel), who dreams of a great flash fiction writers community in India someday. Earlier, I had stumbled upon an Economic Times article (also a minor escapee from years ago!) that seemed to ridicule the genre as not even literature. It was shocking.
I think my outburst was, at least in some measure, precipitated by what came to my notice when I was recently invited to write for a flash fiction anthology of South Asian-origin writers to be published in the UK. Out of about twenty, I was one of only possibly two writers actually based in South Asia. The other writers were based in the UK, the USA, Malaysia, and so on. There’s no denying that there exists a yawning gap, both in terms of quality and quantity, between the two literary worlds that I constantly straddle.
Where do they two worlds meet, readers might ask. Here, and I show them this picture shared by my publisher, of my debut Novella in Flash Fiction.
The chapbook was on display in a South Philadelphia bookstore, in a continent I have never been to. Waking up to the image earlier this week, I was emotional. Prospective readers casually browsing through and finding and perhaps picking up my book to flip through its pages? An eternal dream. I phoned my parents and emailed them the picture. It made them proud and they shared that in as many words. Putting my all into writing means my books, these refugees of the past, will have a passage into the future, no matter what.
