Temporary People

by Deepak Unnikrishnan

Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing
Winner of The Hindu Prize
Best Books of 2017: Booklist, Kirkus, San Francisco Chronicle

"Guest workers of the United Arab Emirates embody multiple worlds and identities and long for home in a fantastical debut work of fiction, winner of the inaugural Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.… An enchanting, unparalleled anthem of displacement and repatriation." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

In the United Arab Emirates, foreign nationals constitute over 80 percent of the population. Brought in to construct and serve the towering monuments to wealth that punctuate the skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, this labor force is not given the option of citizenship. Some ride their luck to good fortune. Others suffer different fates. Until now, the humanitarian crisis of the so-called “guest workers” of the Gulf has barely been addressed in fiction. With his stunning, mind-altering debut novel Temporary People, Deepak Unnikrishnan delves into their histories, myths, struggles, and triumphs.

Combining the linguistic invention of Salman Rushdie and the satirical vision of George Saunders, Unnikrishnan presents twenty-eight linked stories that careen from construction workers who shapeshift into luggage and escape a labor camp, to a woman who stitches back together the bodies of those who’ve fallen from buildings in progress, to a man who grows ideal workers designed to live twelve years and then perish—until they don’t, and found a rebel community in the desert. With this polyphony of voices, Unnikrishnan maps a new, unruly global English and gives personhood back to the anonymous workers of the Gulf.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Magical Realism, Middle East, Contemporary, Asia, Fantasy

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 2017

About the author

Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer from Abu Dhabi and a resident of the States, who has lived in Teaneck, New Jersey, Brooklyn, New York and Chicago, Illinois. He has studied and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and presently teaches at New York University Abu Dhabi. Temporary People, his first book, was the inaugural winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

Reviews

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title says it all - a collection of interrelated short stories about Indian workers in the Middle East, not citizens, not fully human, just "temporary. " But I was expecting social realism, and instead got fantastic flights of fancy (cockroaches who dress and talk like men, a malevolent violent elevator, people grown from seeds, among others). In the vein of Exit West and the Underground Railroad (two more polished, and also more mainstream, works), Temporary People narrates the grittiest and harshest reality using tools more often found in "genre" fiction.

As befits a first collection from a young writer, the book is rather wildly uneven. While some stories (the one that begins with kids playing soccer in the parking lot and escalates into something very dark, the aforementioned cockroach tales) are truly brilliant, by turns funny and lacerating, there are also tales that seem repetitive or clumsier.

However, this is certainly the only book you'll read about this subject matter this year, and likely one of the most inventive books you'll read for a long time. Worth a try.

[Jacob Hoefer · Rating 5 out of 5]

What at first appears to be a loose collection of short stories soon developes into a deeply conneted series of modern day fables. This book hovers on the border of novel and colletion. His sureal approach to storytelling sets Deepak Unnikshnan apart from the rest, giving us a unique voice to an underserved area of fiction.
After today I'm going to be hunting down any ARC of his I come across in the years to come.

some my favorite chapters
-fone
-Le Musee
-Mitsubishi

[Kazen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until recently I thought I wasn't a short story person. I guess I was just reading the wrong ones, as I loved The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers last year and I love Temporary People. So what are the ingredients to a perfect-for-me collection?

- A window onto an experience I'm not familiar with

The city flirted with these people, making all give and give up. The air was spiked; everyone wanted a taste.

Temporary People is about foreign laborers in Gulf states, working in places like Dubai. Often they come for economic reasons, sending the money they make back home, but others start families and stay... until they're forced to leave.

Unnikrishnan uses fantastic elements to get at the reality underpinning the guest worker experience. The story Birds follows Anna Varghese, who tapes construction workers together after they fall from the buildings they're working on. When they hit the ground an arm skitters off in one direction, their spleen and eye in another, but they don't die. They simply wait for someone to come by at night and patch them together with glue, a needle, and some horsehair.

Anna had a superb track record for finding fallen men. The woman must have been part-bloodhound. She found everything, including teeth, bits of skin... the men were grateful to be fussed over like this.

...The fallen shared that when Anna reattached body parts, she spoke to them in her tongue, sometimes stroking their hair or chin... If she didn't speak his language, she sang, poorly, but from the heart. But even Anna lost people.

Metaphors of men being seen as things comes up again and again. In one story they're literally grown in soil to fill the need for more labor. It would be clumsy and blunt in the wrong hands but Unnikreishnan breathes life into each story, which brings me to my next ingredient.

- A solid plot held together with inventive writing

Temporary People is written in English, but it's not the sort you may have grown up with. It's a Global English - largely the same but bending in places to fit the needs of its speakers.

In the back [of the shop]... was what some customers sought him out for, a fone. The device resembled a rotary phone, but it wasn't a phone; it was a fone... the fone's main purpose was teleportation. A man could use the fone to talk to his wife, and as his wife cried softly into the neighbor's phone, her husband would hover over her, like a giant bee, seeing his wife cry like that, feeling satisfied that his wife could cry like that, content that he could see her cry like that, even though she wouldn't be able to see him, or even know that he was there, so close he could see the dirt on the back of her neck.

Unnikrishnan molds words to do his bidding and they sucked me in. Once there the plot keeps things moving - I made sure I had time to finish each story as I knew I wouldn't be able to put it down halfway.

- A touch of something... different

Here, as you can tell from the above examples, it's a touch of magical realism. It bends reality like Global English molds the language, allowing us to get past the facts and come closer to truth. Cockroaches wear clothes and walk on two legs. A tongue jumps out of a mouth one day, crossing the road and leaving stray nouns in its wake. An elevator is implicated in a crime. It sounds fantastic when boiled down to one sentence like that, but it's spun out in such a way that's not jarring, just... well, magical. Some stories share common links, making it easy to imagine the different settings as part of a cohesive whole.

The result is wonderful, and Unnikrishnan has earned a fan. I can't wait to see what he comes out with next.

...and if you know short story collections that have two or more of these ingredients tell me in the comments! I'm always on the hunt for more :)

Thanks to Restless Books and Edelweiss for providing a review copy.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has lingered on my TBR a few years but I knew the author lived in UAE. Like many people in UAE he was not born there (he was born in Kerala, India) and no longer lives there (lives in the United States). But this caught my eye when it won the first Restless Books' prize for New Immigrant Writing.

This is more of a collection of stories and poems and drawings, many are highly absurd or surreal, some fall closer to satire. It reminded me a lot of JG Ballard actually. Nobody comes from UAE, the foods and languages are all from elsewhere, the buildings are impermanent and always being upgraded, and nobody gets to stay.

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Indians have been migrating abroad since the 19th century in search of better lives and jobs. The Indian diaspora in East and southern Africa, the Caribbeans, Fiji, Malaya, Ceylon, the Western nations and the Gulf countries is a testament to this. Apart from the West and the Gulf, the two million Indians who went to the other regions, were indentured labor (bonded labor) sent by their British rulers. A majority of them were illiterate and poor. They labored in the African jungles, laying the Kenya-Uganda railway, braving the man-eating lions and diseases. Working conditions were harsh, hours long and wages were low in the plantations in Fiji and the Caribbeans. Children were forced to work from as early as the age of five. Unfortunately, we have few records or details of the experiences of these people because they were illiterate. They did not put anything down on paper for posterity. Fortunately, in recent times, there is much literature on the experiences of Indian immigrants to the West due to their higher levels of education and abilities to write in English and other Indian languages. However, we still had little in print in English by way of the experiences of the massive Indian diaspora in the Persian Gulf countries. Though most of these immigrants were from the working class in Kerala and hence literate, they still perhaps didn’t have the facility in English to write that well. Possibly, there is much written in their native tongue, Malayalam. As far as I know, this book is only the second in English on the lives of the Gulf Indians. I have always been looking forward to a book such as this one in English.

The book is dominated by the theme of transience that is integral to the lives of the migrant workers in the UAE. The author tries to get his hands around this temporariness in a collection, consisting of extremely short stories, short poems and some standard-size short stories. Some stories are surreal in nature, some touching on fantasy, some satirical and some others resembling like modern-day fables. A couple will grab everyone’s attention. One story called ‘Pravasis’, meaning ‘expatriates’, is just a set of words related to the Gulf migrant worker, ranging from ‘foreigner’ to ‘maid’ to ‘mistress’ to ‘deported’ and ‘arriving’. A second one called ‘Pravasis?’ starts with words like ‘ Camel Rider’ and goes on to ‘morgue cleaner’ to ‘helicopter pilot’ and eventually to ‘Stone breaker’ and ‘Day dreamer’. One story is rather Kafkaesque, where an apartment manager interrogates a teenage girl who suspects the Mitsubishi elevator in the building to be guilty of child molestation and kidnappings. The one I liked best is ‘Birds’, which talks about Anna, a Malayalee nurse, who rides her neighbourhood at nights, and stitches and repairs broken limbs of men who had fallen down earlier in the day from high up on the construction sites. ‘Blatella Germanica’ reminds one of Franz Kafka as well because it is about Gulf cockroaches in the kitchens which learn to interpret human communication and escape attacks of ‘Baygone’ insecticide sprays by faking death. However, the inescapable drift in the book is the toil, obedience and subservience of the millions of Indian migrant workers who build all the tall edifices of the Emirates and dutifully fly home at the end of their contract. That is, if they were lucky enough to survive the perils of the construction sites, the tyranny of the employment agents and the ‘shurthas’, otherwise known as the police.

After finishing the book, I would say that my response is mixed. Though the author grew up in Abu Dhabi and is a Keralite, he lives in the US now. He has studied and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and presently teaches at the New York University in Abu Dhabi. He is not one of the proletariat in the Gulf, who has gone through many of the trials and tribulations of the Indian construction worker, taxi driver, waiter, forklift driver and so on. This book is the perspective of a ‘class outsider’ on the lives he writes about. Unnikrishnan writes tellingly about the temporariness of the migrant worker in the UAE in the following words - ‘one is wedded to one’s job, which is wedded to your work visa and agent’. However, I am a little skeptical about this emphasis on ‘temporariness’ as the predominant focus of the Indian migrant worker. In my limited experience with Indian white-collar as well working class migrants to the Gulf, my impression is that Indians of all classes go to the Gulf countries with no expectations of permanent residence ever. They mainly hope to make a good deal of money as long as their contract lasts, the longer the better. They want to send home money to India to their families, for their children’s education, to build a home in Kochi and just ascend a few notches in the economic status back home in Kerala or Tamilnadu. Temporariness does not seem to be such an existential issue for them. It is different for the Indian diaspora in the US, UK or Canada. They have acute anxiety about permanent residence there.

The lives of the Indian people in the UAE that Unnikrishnan writes about is unrelentingly unhappy and replete with cultural alienation. I cannot remember one story where the migrant makes it big in the UAE and integrates well with the local Arabs. Surely, with Indians in every walk of life in the UAE and with trade booming between India and the Gulf, the reality may be much sunnier than what one gets from the book. It is puzzling to see the author, who grew up there, not having anything nice to say about the city or its native inhabitants. There is the constant refrain about ‘status’ being linked to speaking Arabic. Certainly, it is good and necessary for the immigrants to learn to speak the local language and not just expect to get by with English alone.

I think one does not even need to go outside India to understand the plight of the migrant worker. Today, in both the southern Indian states of Kerala and Tamilnadu, one can see many migrant workers from North-Eastern India, Jharkhand, Bihar and Orissa states, as a result of low fertility rates in these states for a whole generation. These migrants hardly speak the local language. They don’t have resident Id cards which allow them locally to take advantage of the subsidized facilities for foodgrains, kerosene, medicines, hospitals etc. Often, the single women find it difficult to find decent accommodation. The construction sites where they work are no safer than the ones in the UAE. In comparison, the Gulf migrant perhaps is less free but economically much better off.

Finally, I wonder if this book is freely available in the UAE. My general impression of the UAE is that the authorities do not take kindly to any criticism of the country. Author Unnikrishnan seems to be still living there and working in the New York University in Abu Dhabi. It would be interesting to see if the author loses his job in Abu Dhabi as a consequence or the book is banned in the kingdom.

In spite of my misgivings, this is an important book about the migrant workers in the Gulf. Whatever is said in the book, applies not only to Indian workers in the Gulf, but to all the others from the subcontinent as well - the Nepalis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis. It takes the gloss and focus away from the Western media’s pre-occupation with Dubai and UAE as a land of grand pageantry of the Sheikhs, the camel races, the desert and its stunning buildings and infrastructure. Instead, it tells you that the migrant workers from the Indian subcontinent are just another commodity that is imported into the Gulf just like so many other ones.

[BookishDubai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Temporary People is the 2016 winner of Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. The book is a collection of short stories about the migrant workers of the UAE with hints of magical realism. (Majority of the stories take place in Abu Dhabi, where the author, himself, grew up).

My favorite stories:
Gulf Return
Pravasis
Tongue
Glossary
Nalinakshi
Veed
Kada
Ivday. Avday

Verdict: I liked some of the stories, hated others but overall Temporary People is an important and captivating collection.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace) meets The Dog (Joseph O'Neill)... Magical realism scenes set in a satirical UAE, Kafkaesque stories woven together, based on real life in this country of temporary people. This is the authors first book! Definitely captures the zeitgeist...

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not at all what I expected. Stories are pervaded by the fantastic, the melancholy, the angry, the brutal, the tender. Very intense; i had to take frequent beaks. He is a very talented writer; recommended.

Also, familiarity with the Ramayana will help in the last Veed section. The middle section, 'Tongue. Flesh.' Is very physical and was a challenge for me, but it's a logical part of the whole. I think I liked the Sarama story the best. It tells the Ramayana battle from a woman's point of view, dealing with the reality of the blood and suffering.

[frolick inthe machine · Rating 5 out of 5]

difficult but deeply rewarding book. multi character multi plotted - easy to get lost in all the names !! But I liked how named everything was - this is a real place, with people with real origins, homelands, histories, even if you don’t know them. Maybe you should. Maybe you (I, we) should think about why we don’t know these names.

- about the vast lives & deaths of Indian migrant workers & their families who labor in Abu Dhabi. Many of them from Kerala, southern state in India. Social milieu is mix of Arabs, Indians, Filipinos, Sudanese, couple Brits.

Grisly & humiliating & dehumanizing & cannabalistic violence conveyed in a bizarre and magical prose. The effect is one of wonder and deep sense of mystery at the core of what gets flattened as “immigration” or “labor.” Dehumanization becomes formal here; you are estranged from any enclosed, sovereign, sense of humanity.

The malleability of humans and their bodies - the ways humans turn into bugs, roaches, buildings. Dogs are the only caretakers. Elevators swallow children. The ways humans are grown in labs to become ideal types of workers, soldiers. Humans cut up, broken apart, sewn back together. Deeply visceral, often upsetting.

Reality works differently here; the demands of capital on labor transforms bodies, kinship relations, sense of self.

This feels like a translated text even though it isn’t. The prose, the reality it conveys, requires a ripping apart and infiltration of English language, shot thru w Arabic, Malayalam, etc. The illustrations interspersed throughout also help illustrate this sense of a strange world that can only be glimpsed through mutating our sense of language & embodiment.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny, sexy, surreal, but not really my thing.

[World Literature Today]

"Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People is a riveting debut collection of twenty-eight short stories written in a mélange of stylistic registers. Fiction, Unnikrishnan writes, has “barely addressed the so-called guest workers of the (Arabian) Gulf.” Divided into three parts—“Limbs,” “Tongue,” and “Home”—Temporary People addresses this absence and explores how “temporary status affects psyches, families, memories, fables, and language(s).” Critical here is the fleeting, groundless, and ephemeral quality of the temporary; its propensity to efface or render ghostly the stories of individual lives. As Muthassi in “Sarama” says: “Everybody . . . has a past that ought to be heard. The present is paralyzed without a past.” " - Amit Baishya

This book was reviewed in the March/April 2017 issue of World Literature Today magazine. Read the full review by visiting our website:

https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...

[Kaylee (Curiously Kaylee) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a difficult one to rate. I picked it up not knowing much about it, and the synopsis didn’t tell me too much.

I enjoyed some of the stories. But too many were unnecessarily vulgar. The synopsis did mention that these stories were interconnected, but I only noticed a few chapters with connections. Overall it was a confusing read, though I acknowledge that may just be me.

[Karen Linton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Vulgar for no good reason. Not worth your time.

[Annie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this one so badly. A young expat writer from my own state talking about the struggles of malayalee community (the temporary people) toiling in miserable living and working conditions to provide a better life for their families back home, in hopes of realising their dreams on some future date...
But the book didn't touch any chord within me. Left me dry and disappointed. Many of the short stories had potential but then suddenly there is this garish jump into a surreal world and the story loses its appeal. I don't mind magical realism but it has to be woven lightly through the whole book not packed in to every story like a mandatory component.
I would encourage the author to take it easier with his next book. Tell a story gently pulling along the readers - the Gulf is so rich in stories and memories, he can surely do better.

The title was the best part of the book.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

a mishmash of inventive, loosely-connected metaphorical stories, that never really touched my heart in part because the humanity under discussion were used as vehicles to address their exploitation in Dubai more than they were ever seen as people. the brief exceptions I encountered (i.e. La Musee chapter) didn't make up for the whole.
I DID enjoy the throwaway details that made up these immigrants' lives: the everyday terms, endearments and curse words invoked, the clothing, the constant breaks for tea, the efforts to maintain family across continents... they gave me a taste of a removed culture (and a vastly different melting pot than we're familiar with) but I wanted more than a taste.

[Bryn Lerud · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book. It concerns temporary workers in Abu Dhabi who mostly come from India. They have no prospects of becoming citizens of the UAE and exist at the whim of the gazillionaires in charge. The book has a lot of magical realism - cockroaches dressed in boots and pants - which I'm OK with. But I really did not enjoy reading these stories.

[Hind · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is important. The UAE is the embodiment of parallel universes, that rarely, if ever, intermingle. The result is much tension and confusion, and a rigid social hierarchy. The novel makes an effort to convey these feeling, along with a bunch of various perspectives of what it’s like to live here (primarily as a malayalee man).

[Ying · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sad that I didn't enjoy my own book club pick.

I think I'm just not a fan of magical realism.

I think the book was trying to hard or not hard enough, I can't tell.

I read as much as I could before stopping (around 20%). Could be convinced to read select short stories if recommended to me.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve had this book on my shelf for about 2 years, and I’m so glad I finally read it. Temporary People is a collection of fantastical, linked short stories. The main theme of the collection is alienation, and the stories focus on foreign laborers in the UAE - the workers who are critical to the growth of cities like Dubai, but aren’t allowed permanent citizenship - hence, temporary people. The stories create a very weird universe - where construction workers fall from buildings and are taped back together, laborers are grown from seeds - and a grisly one that will make you uncomfortable - an elevator molests a little girl, people are tortured, there’s lots of talk of “bathing suit parts” (trying to be PG, unlike that cabdriver in “Chabter 2”)...

I can’t say I necessarily enjoyed this collection, but there is a certain rhythm to the writing that really drew me in. I picked this up last night intending to read one or two stories and ended up reading the entire thing in one sitting. I also enjoyed how some of the stories built on each other, so I think I enjoyed the collection as a whole much more than individual stories. It’s definitely a collection that is making me consider its themes and message, much more than other collections I’ve read, but in the end I have mixed feelings about it.

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

230928: not what you are expecting. fantastic, surreal, magical realism-type exploration in the lives of 'guest workers' in the UAE. might think this will be socialist realism, but it is far more interesting. metaphors, allegories, fantastic psychological terrain. everything from passport/human running after escape plane, to very human tongue escaping, shattering on roadway, spilling words and letters in all directions, to carnivorous, sex-abusive elevator, to re-enacted play of ritual grouping murdering one man who is 'acting' though his death certainly seems real, who is resurrected for next year's festival, to workers grown like vegetables, harvested, used, discarded...

this is definitely favourite because of these images, this vision of the world that is not 'western' but not wholly 'eastern' either, makes sense as it is set in UAE, which is sort of the collision of two worldviews. writing is direct, easy to follow. starts like short stories then woven together. human concerns, behaviour universal everywhere from futbol to sex. probably not the reveal of the Arabic world their conservative governments want to share with the world. probably not the stereotypes we in 'the west' characterise the Arabic world as full of religious fanatics, terrorists etc....

[Abdelaziz AlMulla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review can also be found on my Medium page: https://medium.com/@AzoozAlMulla/book...

My first book review will be a book I recently finished (today actually); Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishan.

This book is a series of short stories that talk about the lives of immigrant workers in the United Arab Emirates, mostly in Abu Dhabi.
I was very on and off about the book. Some parts really turned me off, while other parts I found very exciting. I guess that’s why I’m not a big fan of short stories. They’re very inconsistent. However, the exciting parts were very exciting.
Chapter Seven of the second part was very interesting as you can clearly see the different struggles of the main character of that story — from having to work to pay for tuition, to getting a lousy job, and getting harassed while on the job. Chapter Five of the second part of the book is one of my favorites as it takes a look at the lives of teenagers in Abu Dhabi, which, in my opinion, reflected the lives of, not only expat teenagers, but also Emirati teenagers.
One of my least favorite stories in the book is Mushtibushi, Chapter One of the second part. That chapter lost me in so many places. Mostly because of the style it was written in. I got confused so many times as to what was happening. Soon enough, I just lost interest in that story, and skimmed through quickly.

The book is overall good. I loved most of its content, especially since it talked about topics that would be considered taboo in our society. I also loved how peculiar it is. And how some parts are incredibly dystopian. The writer, it seems, wanted to put a comedic touch to his novel. There’s a lot of comedy mixed with local perceptions, and such.

I do recommend the book to people who love short stories, otherwise, it might not be the best read for you.

[giada · Rating 2 out of 5]

Temporary People is a short story collection about the immigrant population of the UAE, which composes 80% of the entire country while being treated as a nuisance at best and as slaves at worst.

Instead of using a realistic approach, the author detaches himself from reality and uses fantastical premises to list some of the horrors these people face, while still keeping the humans themselves at arms length — the focus is usually on language or on the bodies instead of them as people, underlining the fact that under the Emirati eyes they’re all replaceable.

The themes introduced are important and should be prominent not only under the lens of this specific country but they can be transposed to the treatment of immigrants and refugees in most countries — the only problem for me was that I didn’t enjoy the execution on a purely stylistic sense.

[Wyatt strawbridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as impactful as other books I have read however this may be because the cultural references were too much and too obscure for me to recognize. Unnikrishnan uses lots of words in other languages which sometimes I could infer easily and others which I had to let go. Many of the stories and chapters though employed ideas clearly unique and inspired by the situation in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi which made the book quite a good look into the culture/what is valued and relevant to talk about there. Thank you Unnikrishnan!

[Ankita Arora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Temporary People is a collection of short stories in the Gulf, of people mostly from the South Asian Countries and their struggle to have a living in the UAE.

What struck me most about this book is the writing style. You'll find each story written differently. Some have a dystopian element, some a poetic feel, while others have magical realism wherein a woman glues back broken limbs of construction workers for a living to someone's tongue falling out and transforming into a hundred different things.

Few of the stories were not as good. There is quite a variety in content in these 250 pages. Some are somber and simple, while others are brutal and blunt. I really loved the final part of the book, Veed. The stories are, if you read closely, interconnected by a thin string.

I would recommend this to people who love trying new writing styles and to those who like to read short stories.

A close 3.5/5 for me.
Kudos to the author on his debut.

[Jean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very slow paced

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Unnikrishnan is trying to give voice to an anonymous, invisible population - South Asian laborers in the United Arab Emirates. Instead of making them sympathetic or relatable, he dignifies them with surrealism. Cool choice, actually.

[Sammi Cheung · Rating 3 out of 5]

i wasn’t sure what to rate this one because the form-breaking writing style and magical realism combined with the disconnected but continuous short story chapters made this book confusing but potentially brilliant? each chapter i felt myself thinking, wow this is a crazy extended metaphor for something but i also have no clue what’s going on here…

[Ed · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one is kind like my relationship with me and abstract art. I can "get" that it's art, I can "get" that other people "get" it, but I just don't (and, in this case, didn't) get. There is some wonderfully creative things here and certainly introduced cultural aspects that were new and fresh, but it was just too messy/chaotic for me -- a collection of at-times related (but more often not) short stories that jumped from brash reality to surreal to mystical/mythical, some may find this kind of story mix to be exciting, I found it to be exhausting. While I do enjoy dipping my toe into some magical realism, I do have my limits. For example, I can find "growing" laborers on the vine to be oddly charming and fun, but someone turning themselves into a building or have a person to literally crawl up someone's ass a bit too much. Likewise, while certainly no prude I was jolted at some of the crude aspects in many of the stories.

So a bit too "out there" for me on many fronts. Not having much luck with my 2017 Summer Tournament of Books book selections which I usually find to be quite good fits.

[Giulia Cavallari · Rating 2 out of 5]

The description of the book is a bit misleading as nowhere I read it's a short stories book, and no they aren't interconnected except geographically.

I loved the story about Anna the stitcher of construction workers and the one about absence. They both have a meaningful significance in my life in the UAE.

Many other stories were interesting or had potential like the taxi driver one, and the one about labour grown from seeds, but either the narrative or the language was pretty distracting.

I choose this book for a book club. As UAE residents, we thought we'd have an insightful read coming up, even if we were aware of the magic realism intent. We concluded that most stories are not connected to the UAE, which makes the book more universally understandable, but than the language used is at times difficult to understand.

I couldn't make sense of the chapter with the list of people/professions at all.

In general I think the author was trying too hard to stand out, and while the book had potential it was spoiled by the chaotic structure and the writing style.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

This amazing debut is called a novel, but it's really a sprawling, wonderful mess of linked stories exploring the world of migrant guest workers in the United Arab Emirates. Foreign nationals make up over 80% of the population there, but have few rights and no hope of citizenship. Deepak Unnikrishnan was raised in this world, and he immerses us in it with playful surrealism and linguistic invention. The author cites Salman Rushdie and George Saunders as influences, and I think it safe to add Kafka to that list.