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Into the Forest: A Novel
About the Book
INTO THE FOREST, AN EXQUISITELY WRITTEN, HARD-TO-DEFINE NOVEL, IS AS MUCH A MEDITATION ON THE HUMAN RELATIONSHIP TO NON-HUMAN LIFE AS IT IS A LOOK AT THE PUSH AND PULL OF GENDER, CLASS AND RACE IN OUR SOCIETIES.
‘Why do you want to know about what happened, bhai?’
The older man mentions a paper in the UK that may be interested in what happened to Nabi. Its politics are impeccable. His story will resonate there.
Nabi looks unconvinced.
‘People must know our stories,’ says the reporter.
‘Why? What good does it do?’
There are three disappearances; they could all be ‘crimes’, but only one of them ends up in murder. Germany, with its unique fractures, is the perfect setting. This story could only be about women. Yet, this is also a novel about the human condition anywhere, everywhere.
Into the Forest is about loneliness and isolation, migration and belonging. It is also about how times of great stress are both brake and accelerant to human connection.
About the Author
Avtar Singh is an author and editor. Recent fiction credits include the short story A Scandal in Punjab in The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction (2024), and The Corpse Bearer in Subnivean.org (shortlisted for the Subnivean prize 2023).
Recent non-fiction credits include work in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Nikkei Asian Review, India Today and Biblio.
Singh was a summer fellow at the MacDowell Colony in 2018. He was founding editor-in-chief of Time Out Delhi, and managing editor of The Indian Quarterly. His last novel, Necropolis, about crime, poetry and a woman who may be centuries-old (HarperCollins India and Akashic Press, US, 2014), was translated into German as Nekroplis. His first novel was The Beauty of These Present Things (Penguin India, 2000).
Among other print credits, his work has been collected in Mumbai Noir, Civil Lines and the essay volume Pilgrim’s India.
He has lived and worked in India, the US and China, and is now based in Germany.
INTO THE FOREST, AN EXQUISITELY WRITTEN, HARD-TO-DEFINE NOVEL, IS AS MUCH A MEDITATION ON THE HUMAN RELATIONSHIP TO NON-HUMAN LIFE AS IT IS A LOOK AT THE PUSH AND PULL OF GENDER, CLASS AND RACE IN OUR SOCIETIES.
‘Why do you want to know about what happened, bhai?’
The older man mentions a paper in the UK that may be interested in what happened to Nabi. Its politics are impeccable. His story will resonate there.
Nabi looks unconvinced.
‘People must know our stories,’ says the reporter.
‘Why? What good does it do?’
There are three disappearances; they could all be ‘crimes’, but only one of them ends up in murder. Germany, with its unique fractures, is the perfect setting. This story could only be about women. Yet, this is also a novel about the human condition anywhere, everywhere.
Into the Forest is about loneliness and isolation, migration and belonging. It is also about how times of great stress are both brake and accelerant to human connection.
About the Author
Avtar Singh is an author and editor. Recent fiction credits include the short story A Scandal in Punjab in The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction (2024), and The Corpse Bearer in Subnivean.org (shortlisted for the Subnivean prize 2023).
Recent non-fiction credits include work in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Nikkei Asian Review, India Today and Biblio.
Singh was a summer fellow at the MacDowell Colony in 2018. He was founding editor-in-chief of Time Out Delhi, and managing editor of The Indian Quarterly. His last novel, Necropolis, about crime, poetry and a woman who may be centuries-old (HarperCollins India and Akashic Press, US, 2014), was translated into German as Nekroplis. His first novel was The Beauty of These Present Things (Penguin India, 2000).
Among other print credits, his work has been collected in Mumbai Noir, Civil Lines and the essay volume Pilgrim’s India.
He has lived and worked in India, the US and China, and is now based in Germany.
197 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 22, 2024
4 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Avtar Singh
152 books22 followersAvtar Singh is the author of The Beauty of These Present Things. He has worked as a magazine editor in Mumbai and Delhi. He lives in Delhi with his wife, son, and singing dog. Necropolis is his latest novel.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 22, 2024
Janice Pariat's recommendation, "Into the Forest" by Avtar Singh, is in one word, a minimalist book. What stands out is the brevity of the text, the crisp sentences and the very deft, nuanced rendering of the story.
Set against the lockdown in a small town in Germany, the characters are mainly women of different nationalities and a man, at the heart of a mysterious disappearance.
In attempting to fit in, in a foreign setting and culture, these immigrants gradually bond over their loneliness, the times have ushered.
A forest adjoining the town, is where majority of the interactions happen. The author is impressive at reading the forest and writing about it, creating a fabulous atmosphere of mystery, beauty, intrigue, restraint and conversely, abandon.
Human connection and condition is at the heart of the story. There's so much conveyed through silence and inference. The pivot in the story, is a deep inhale moment, lifting the book, higher, reminiscent of Julian Barnes', The Sense of an Ending.
It's the kind of story and writing, which enhances one's reading experience.
Set against the lockdown in a small town in Germany, the characters are mainly women of different nationalities and a man, at the heart of a mysterious disappearance.
In attempting to fit in, in a foreign setting and culture, these immigrants gradually bond over their loneliness, the times have ushered.
A forest adjoining the town, is where majority of the interactions happen. The author is impressive at reading the forest and writing about it, creating a fabulous atmosphere of mystery, beauty, intrigue, restraint and conversely, abandon.
Human connection and condition is at the heart of the story. There's so much conveyed through silence and inference. The pivot in the story, is a deep inhale moment, lifting the book, higher, reminiscent of Julian Barnes', The Sense of an Ending.
It's the kind of story and writing, which enhances one's reading experience.
August 20, 2024
A surprisingly interesting book.
Was given to me as a gift; so I began my read with no context or expectations, and it turned out to be a delightful gem.
I was taken with Avtar Singh's spare but eloquent prose. Much of the meaning making lies in what is unsaid or rather, unwritten. In what hangs in the air, in what the reader gleans from between the lines. It is lyrical and insightful prose at its best.
Set in an unknown German town during the pandemic, while it is meant to be a reflection on loneliness, it is really quite the opposite: a coming together of lonely people, who, in reaching out through their isolation, end up creating lasting connections.
I enjoyed the unexpected ending, though it felt too neatly and simplisticly tied up to be a believeable payoff. I really wished it retained the strange, deeply quiet and out of ordinary character through to the end.
Was given to me as a gift; so I began my read with no context or expectations, and it turned out to be a delightful gem.
I was taken with Avtar Singh's spare but eloquent prose. Much of the meaning making lies in what is unsaid or rather, unwritten. In what hangs in the air, in what the reader gleans from between the lines. It is lyrical and insightful prose at its best.
Set in an unknown German town during the pandemic, while it is meant to be a reflection on loneliness, it is really quite the opposite: a coming together of lonely people, who, in reaching out through their isolation, end up creating lasting connections.
I enjoyed the unexpected ending, though it felt too neatly and simplisticly tied up to be a believeable payoff. I really wished it retained the strange, deeply quiet and out of ordinary character through to the end.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews