Indian Winter

by Kazim Ali

A queer writer travelling through India can't escape the regrets of his past nor the impending ruin of his present.
"I am leaving for the winter – I have to get away from this small town and all its dangers – to write, read, think, all the most important things in the world but which are thought the least important, the most expendable." Thus begins the Indian winter of our narrator, a queer writer and translator much like the author, a winter that includes a meandering journey through India, trying to write about a long-ago lover whose death he has just learned of. While on this journey into memory, he flees his current faltering relationship in search of new friendships and intimacies. Inspired by Antonio Tabucchi's Indian Nocturne, and by the writings of Anaïs Nin, Rachel Cusk, and Carole Maso, among others, Indian Winter finds itself where the travel diary, the kunstlerroman, poetry, and autofiction meet. But the heartbreak brought on by his unravelling relationship and his family's inability to accept his queerness cannot be outrun; as he traverses India, our narrator can't help but repeatedly encounter himself and the range of love and alienation he has within.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Queer

160 pages, Paperback

Published May 14, 2024

About the author

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, includingthe volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator (of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others) and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism. After a career in public policy and organizing, Ali taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light.

Author photo by Tanya Rosen-Jones from Kazim Ali's press kit.

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, I was disappointed. There are some nice elements and a generally entertaining story line about an American poet of Indian heritage who, upon learning of the suicide of a man he once loved, long after the fact, heads to India for several months. He wants to write about this man whom he loved but was unable to love him and, at the same time, get some distance from what he feels is a failing relationship at home and his anxiety about his family's long standing rejection of his sexuality. He spends his time thinking about this past love, wondering how to write about it, practicing yoga and having flings with young men.

The narrative is generously peppered with passing references to writers and poets (some very interesting and unexpected), but only Marguerite Duras and Anais Nin getting slightly more attention. Even the book which is supposedly an inspiration for the book, Antonio Tabucchi's Indian Nocturne, is passed off quickly. To read it is to feel that there is not enough substance (or too heavy editing) and yet it lacks the very spare dreamy qualities that make Indian Nocturne so special. The narrator notes that Tabucchi can write the way he does because he's Italian, not Indian, but it feels like this narrator has only a superficial knowledge of India. I recognize some of his place references (which are mostly passed through quickly), but there are some odd features that stand out. For example, the sun does not rise out of the sea off the coast of Kerala and set into the sea off Puducherry in Tamil Nadu. To refer to the Gateway of India in Mumbai as the "Gate of India" is weird. For the most part, the narrator spends most of his time in a resort in Kerala and at some, obviously Western agricultural research centre.

The one thing I did like is that some interesting questions about writing and how to write about a real experience in one's life, especially one with complicated and muddled emotions. And the conclusion is nice, but there are too many all-too-convenient occurrences along the way, and too much talking about feelings for the novel to achieve what it might have.

[Marcus (Lit_Laugh_Luv)]

Marking this as a DNF - tried physically and via audio, but unfortunately this isn't landing for me!

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re looking for a good short book to read before the end of this month then I’d recommend INDIAN WINTER by Kazim Ali. This novel is 153 pages and I really enjoyed reading it which for me was the perfect book at the right time. I read the majority of this book the day after attending the Vancouver Writers Festival and I loved how the narrator is a writer traveling to India for a literary festival and poetry readings and meeting old friends and new acquaintances. There’s a lot of characters that totally reflects my experience at a festival and traveling as well as you’re talking to strangers and meeting old and new friends. I took this book with me to Calgary and it was the perfect size (compact and slim!) and when I finished the book on the way home it left me feeling so satisfied with the ending and the way the narrator goes about writing about his grief, his capacity for love and queer joy, and his need for connection. I would love to read this author’s poetry too!

Thank you to Coach House Books for my copy!

[Ani]

i bought this book on a whim summer 2024 in chicago post my master’s graduation, and being that this is a winter i am not visiting india, i let the warmth of the motherland greet me through the words of this book. the feeling of being of two worlds but wholly belonging to neither… or of any world really, is pervasive, and i often feel an abstract grief for the version of me that would exist had i continued to grow up there, as well as the abstract grief for who i would’ve missed out on being here if i continued to live there. this book really helped me in that feeling. affirming read in and about the liquidness of it all. what do we seek when we don’t know what we are to seek in the first place? what seeks us? who are we allowed to miss, and what versions of them? where is home outside of our our liquid selves? india truly is a place of divinity in all forms, in the strangers and those who know you best, in the physical and in the deeper inexplicable places that are metaphysical. i miss it. i know people get antsy with books like this one that don’t have an innate plot, but i personally and ironically feel grounded in books as aqueous as this one because it shows me i am not alone in feeling like i’m a bobbing apple in an ocean. liberation is what you deem it to be and you can choose it for yourself at anytime. rot and ripe arising in the same fruit. what is lost in the translations of love? how can one bear to describe it?

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this book. The writing style is fantastic, exactly how my brain thinks.

I like how the author portrays the confusion of love.

[Sam Skold]

“Why did I even try to pray in a language that doesn’t fit my mouth?”

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Write what you know, the old saying goes. But Kazim Ali's gorgeous, metafictional novel admonishes us for entertaining such a simple sentiment. We deserve something deeper. One should write with the heart, not just with the brain. Write what you feel, goddammit. Relating a deeply felt ongoing present that's shaped by an emotionally unresolved past, "Indian Winter" is an ardent piece of postmodernism, a queer love letter to contemporary life, a picaresque tale of self-discovery and self-critique and self-reflection. As the narrator, an academic poet, recounts an unhurried literary tour in India, he's also restlessly picking apart a seminal romance (with a man who eventually committed suicide) and struggling in his current relationship with an anti-romantic (who's more action than words). So will he write a roman a clef about the former? Get consumed by his diary entries about the latter? Embrace the freedom that comes with being alone and abroad and acclaimed? Why choose one? I can't remember the last time I read an entire novel within a 24-hour period but I found "Indian Winter" impossible to put down. Absolutely marvelous.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for any novel written by a poet. The dense amalgamation of poetry given room to breathe across chapters. And even as the narrator muses "a fiction of carefully crafted language with flowing sentences and paragraphs always makes me suspicious" I found the language hypnotizing.

A queer poet, uncertain or maybe ambivalent about his current relationship, and learning of the death of a former lover, escapes to India. It is the country of his parents and he recounts the sun of Varkala, the loneliness of Bengaluru, and the doom of Hyderabad. It's a queer, brown, Eat, Pray, Love — a travelogue filled with wry details of the many people he encounters that nonetheless reveals that "few are the people that live close, and listen hard."

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The narrator goes to India to work out his feelings about his former relationship and his current one. I came away without knowing anything about either of them, except that the narrator's feelings for them were complicated. I enjoyed the observations of India and some of the descriptions about what it is like to write.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5☆ Review to come, thank you to the publisher for the gifted copy!

[Noor · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars!! more thoughts to come

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Somehow I only wanted to be reading this after midnight because it puts me in a reverie state of mind, though I started reading it in a plane which also seemed appropriate.

Very Anais Nin, a traveling narrative, a diary, a houseboat, the story of exile

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short novel reflecting on travel, meaning and relationships both brief and enduring.

3.5 rounded down

[ire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t the words to explain my feelings now. I was captivated by this 200 page book for 5 days. I spent each of those days reading and re-reading. I observed the world around me as I read, and my own life which had become parallel to the one I explored in the book. A beautiful read.