Website → http://iguanabooks.ca/
Book Blurb
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.
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.
PURCHASING LINKS
https://amzn.to/2DQIclm
https://bit.ly/2Lqe9Fi
Thank you for your time in
answering our questions about getting published. Let’s begin by having
you explain to us why you decided to become an author and pen this book?
we,
of the forsaken world... came to me in
2011, when I was on a bus between Dubrovnik and Zagreb. A tall, brunette woman with a lingering stare sat down
next to me on one of the stops. We began to talk about a host of things I can’t
remember now, but the one thing that she told me which did remain in my head
was the following: Croatia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Something about that sentence inspired my imagination.
After we reached the bus station, I had to sit on one of the metal benches for
a few hours, and write. I was starting to imagine different countries,
completely imagined in my head. One was a half-rich half poor megalopolis, the
sort found in most third-world countries. Then, there was a town that wasn’t so
different looking from my grandmother’s place, the southern Indian city of Mysore. There was a tribe in the middle of nowhere, not to
mention a town of great touristic importance, destroyed by an industrial spill.
I also imagined hundreds of voices. Though, over the course of time, those two
hundred-so voices became around sixteen; the most distinct and boisterous of
the lot.
As for why I became an author itself... well, that is more complicated. I
suppose it started at the age of 17, 2007, when my parents tried to cure me for
being gay, and I had to turn to poetry to emotionally survive. I showed this
poetry to my classmates and teachers, and they said it was quite good. I grew
the courage to write stories, and then as I started traveling, I realized I
wanted to write for a global era. So, I continued to travel, continued to
write, and continue to creatively evolve.
Is this your first book?
It is my first work in
English, but I’ve published books in my mother tongue Kannada, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Mandarin.
With this particular book,
how did you publish – traditional, small press, Indie, etc. – and why did you
choose this method?
I chose to publish with
an indie press, because they were the only ones as of now who really loved the
book, and so I went with them.
Can you tell us a little
about your publishing journey? The pros
and cons?
I had
finished the book in 2016. One of my friends, who was an editor at a small
press in New York, gave me a list of agents to contact. Most of them
responsed stealthily and quickly, but after some months, they did not find my
book – experimental, ambitious, overtly literary – to be a quick fit for the
market. They had to turn it down. After about a year of waiting for these
agents to respond, I started submitting to small presses. It was in 2019 that I
got a response from an editor at Iguana Books. They were interested in
publishing the book. I told them that I was still waiting for some other
publishers to respond, so I asked them to wait for some weeks so that I could
get some responses. Within two weeks, this same editor emailed me, asking me to
follow up. He really liked this book, and wanted to publish it.
Before my work with Iguana
Books, I hadn’t had a publisher respond to me so positively. Admittedly, Iguana
Books is a hybrid press. This means that they vet every book project that they
take on, but they ask the author to take on the financial burdens of
publication. This still did not mean that they had to care so much about my
writing. They did a lot of work, from the editorial stages, to the design of
the cover, and the maps that I asked to have tailored onto the book itself, to
make sure that the book was aesthetically enriched. They spent a lot of time
with me talking on the phone, making sure all of my needs were met, from
last-minute changes to a sentence or two, to having my books flown to Hong Kong or Delhi for the sake of book festivals. I do not think having been
published by a hybrid press has downgraded the quality of my work in any way;
if anything, I am glad to have had people who believe as fondly in my vision as
I do. It makes me look forward to later publications, as well as the future of
my career.
I
think it would be hard for me to speak of the pros and cons of hybrid
publishing; I will have to see, I suppose, once the book officially comes out.
What lessons do you feel you
learned about your particular publishing journey and about the publishing
industry as a whole?
There is still a lot of
stigma in the world towards hybrid publishing, as there is to any alternative
means of writing. I don’t understand it, because we all approach writing
because we believe we have a story to tell, and so we should judge people
inherently through their talents in writing, not by the means to which they
published.
Would you recommend this
method of publishing to other authors?
I don’t know. I think
you pick whatever path ends up working for you as a writer. If a big publisher
takes it, then go for that. If they don’t, keep going down the ladder, until
self-publishing is the last resort, and then take that route.
What’s the best advice you
can give to aspiring authors?
We as writers are drawn
to write what we believe in because that is what our minds have chosen for us.
Do justice to that path, and you will get everything you deserve.
Thank you for your time in
answering our questions about getting published. Let’s begin by having
you explain to us why you decided to become an author and pen this book?
we,
of the forsaken world... came to me in
2011, when I was on a bus between Dubrovnik and Zagreb. A tall, brunette woman with a lingering stare sat down
next to me on one of the stops. We began to talk about a host of things I can’t
remember now, but the one thing that she told me which did remain in my head
was the following: Croatia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Something about that sentence inspired my imagination.
After we reached the bus station, I had to sit on one of the metal benches for
a few hours, and write. I was starting to imagine different countries,
completely imagined in my head. One was a half-rich half poor megalopolis, the
sort found in most third-world countries. Then, there was a town that wasn’t so
different looking from my grandmother’s place, the southern Indian city of Mysore. There was a tribe in the middle of nowhere, not to
mention a town of great touristic importance, destroyed by an industrial spill.
I also imagined hundreds of voices. Though, over the course of time, those two
hundred-so voices became around sixteen; the most distinct and boisterous of
the lot.
As for why I became an author itself... well, that is more complicated. I suppose it started at the age of 17, 2007, when my parents tried to cure me for being gay, and I had to turn to poetry to emotionally survive. I showed this poetry to my classmates and teachers, and they said it was quite good. I grew the courage to write stories, and then as I started traveling, I realized I wanted to write for a global era. So, I continued to travel, continued to write, and continue to creatively evolve.
Is this your first book?
It is my first work in
English, but I’ve published books in my mother tongue Kannada, Spanish,
Portuguese, and Mandarin.
With this particular book,
how did you publish – traditional, small press, Indie, etc. – and why did you
choose this method?
I chose to publish with
an indie press, because they were the only ones as of now who really loved the
book, and so I went with them.
Can you tell us a little
about your publishing journey? The pros
and cons?
I had
finished the book in 2016. One of my friends, who was an editor at a small
press in New York, gave me a list of agents to contact. Most of them
responsed stealthily and quickly, but after some months, they did not find my
book – experimental, ambitious, overtly literary – to be a quick fit for the
market. They had to turn it down. After about a year of waiting for these
agents to respond, I started submitting to small presses. It was in 2019 that I
got a response from an editor at Iguana Books. They were interested in
publishing the book. I told them that I was still waiting for some other
publishers to respond, so I asked them to wait for some weeks so that I could
get some responses. Within two weeks, this same editor emailed me, asking me to
follow up. He really liked this book, and wanted to publish it.
Before my work with Iguana
Books, I hadn’t had a publisher respond to me so positively. Admittedly, Iguana
Books is a hybrid press. This means that they vet every book project that they
take on, but they ask the author to take on the financial burdens of
publication. This still did not mean that they had to care so much about my
writing. They did a lot of work, from the editorial stages, to the design of
the cover, and the maps that I asked to have tailored onto the book itself, to
make sure that the book was aesthetically enriched. They spent a lot of time
with me talking on the phone, making sure all of my needs were met, from
last-minute changes to a sentence or two, to having my books flown to Hong Kong or Delhi for the sake of book festivals. I do not think having been
published by a hybrid press has downgraded the quality of my work in any way;
if anything, I am glad to have had people who believe as fondly in my vision as
I do. It makes me look forward to later publications, as well as the future of
my career.
I
think it would be hard for me to speak of the pros and cons of hybrid
publishing; I will have to see, I suppose, once the book officially comes out.
What lessons do you feel you
learned about your particular publishing journey and about the publishing
industry as a whole?
There is still a lot of
stigma in the world towards hybrid publishing, as there is to any alternative
means of writing. I don’t understand it, because we all approach writing
because we believe we have a story to tell, and so we should judge people
inherently through their talents in writing, not by the means to which they
published.
Would you recommend this
method of publishing to other authors?
I don’t know. I think
you pick whatever path ends up working for you as a writer. If a big publisher
takes it, then go for that. If they don’t, keep going down the ladder, until
self-publishing is the last resort, and then take that route.
What’s the best advice you
can give to aspiring authors?
We as writers are drawn
to write what we believe in because that is what our minds have chosen for us.
Do justice to that path, and you will get everything you deserve.
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