Indian Winter

CBC BOOKS: 2024 SPRING FICTION PREVIEW

A queer writer journeys through India, grappling with the ghosts of his past and the unraveling of his present.

“I am leaving for the winter – I have to escape this small town and all its dangers – to write, read, and think: the most essential things in the world, yet treated as the most disposable.”

So begins the Indian winter of our narrator, a queer writer and translator echoing the author’s own experiences. His odyssey takes him through bustling streets and quiet sanctuaries, haunted by the memory of a long-ago lover whose death he has just learned of. While delving into these recollections, he also flees the wreckage of his faltering relationship, seeking solace in fleeting connections, new friendships, and fragile intimacies.

Drawing inspiration from Antonio Tabucchi’s Indian Nocturne, and the works of Anaïs Nin, Rachel Cusk, and Carole Maso, Indian Winter blurs boundaries between travelogue, poetry, künstlerroman, and autofiction. Yet, no distance is enough to escape the heartbreak of a disintegrating relationship or the enduring sting of his family’s rejection of his queerness. As he travels deeper into India, the narrator is repeatedly confronted by himself—his longing for connection and the complex interplay of love, alienation, and identity.

An evocative exploration of memory, self-discovery, and the inexorable pull of the past.