Exquisite Cadavers

by Meena Kandasamy

Karim and Maya are lovers. They share a home, they worry about money, and then Maya falls pregnant. But Karim is still finishing his film degree, pushing against his tutors' insistence that his art must be Arab like him. And Maya, working a zero-hours job and fretting about her family, can't find the time to quit smoking, let alone have a child.

Framed with fragments and peppered with footnotes Exquisite Cadavers is at once a bricolage of influence, and a love story that knows no borders.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, India, Poetry, Literary Fiction, Novella, Novels

112 pages, Hardcover

First published November 7, 2019

About the author

DR MEENA KANDASAMY is a poet-activist with over 200,000 followers. She has been translated into more than 20 languages. Her previous novel, When I Hit You, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize. Her viral poetry collection, Ms Militancy, is a symbol of feminist rebellion across India. In 2022, Meena was awarded the PEN Germany Prize for being a "fearless fighter for human rights.” She has two sons.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the follow on work from “When I Hit You” and there are links between the two. It is also an experimental novel with two parallel streams of narrative on the same page. One narrative is the story being written, the other is a sort of commentary on it, on Kandasamy’s life, on the current political context, especially on Mohdi’s India. The author is present on the page in a very obvious way and there is inevitably an interaction between writer, text and reader. This could have been irritating, clumsy or just over clever. However the interrelation is very pertinent and works well. The reader does have a choice about how to read the text and in what order, but the themes in both texts are linked. A note about the title: “Exquisite Cadavers” was the name of a game surrealist artists played, very similar to consequences. It is also a reference to the Oulipian technique of assembling artworks from pieces contributed by a variety of people. Kandasamy was angered by reviewers describing her previous novel as a memoir, and in her parallel text she comments about her western audience:
“writers like me are interesting because
– we are from a place where horrible things happen, or,
– horrible things have happened to us, or,
– a combination of the above.
No one discusses process with us.
No one discusses our work in the framework of the novel as an evolving form.
No one treats us as writers, only as diarists who survived”
There is an epigraph in the novel which says, “The purpose of avant-garde writing for a writer of colour is to prove that you are human”. Kandasamy has commented that writers of colour are seen not so much as artists, but as “diarists who have survived”
The main novella is the story of a couple Karim (a Tunisian film maker at a film school in London and Maya, a dual heritage British woman. We follow their angsts and Karim’s struggles with his tutors when he tries to make the films he wants rather than the ones they think he ought to make. The parallel text documents Kandasamy’s struggles to feel some empathy for her female protagonist. She finally decides Maya should be pregnant, as she is:
“I cannot make her me. Then again, I cannot relate to her if I do not share anything with her.”
And then another aside about Maya:
“I make her relatable to the British readers, I steal a little of every Englishwoman I see to build the composite. Amy Sarah Claire Naomi Gill Lucy Allison and god yes Kate.”
Kandasamy addresses contemporary issues such as #MeToo, immigration, sexual violence, film criticism, the damage families do to each other, selfhood and the relationship between the individual and history. The marginalia are almost like a diary.
This may challenge your reading habits but it is well worth the effort and this is a thought provoking novel. Kandasamy is fast becoming one of my favourite authors.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meena Kandasamy's previous novel When I Hit You was a very powerful story, and I can entirely understand why many felt it was more of a memoir than a novel.

This time round, she is much more open about her creative processes, so much so that there are two parallel texts running all the way through the book, one in normal text which tells the story (which is fictional, but once again draws a lot from the author's experience), and another in smaller font size along the outer margins in which she puts her authorial thoughts and asides, for example why she made certain creative decisions and what real life events, experiences and memories inspired her.

This makes for a rather disjointed reading experience, and since the book is very short, it can be read in a single sitting.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The purpose of avant-garde writing for a writer of colour is to prove you are human” by M NourbeSe Philip.

One of the book prizes I follow closely is the Goldsmith Prize for fiction, a British book award for fiction with a shortlist of six books each year (since its first year of 2013) and the annual winner being a book “genuinely novel and which embodies the spirit of invention that characterizes the genre at its best”. One of the most striking things about the prize (particularly when attending its shortlist readings) is its complete lack of racial diversity – I can only think of 3 books by writers of colour among the 35 it has shortlisted: and as a prize which seems to have a large overlap between current judges and past shortlistees (and vice versa) this only seems to become more entrenched.

It is something which I hope and expect to be addressed this year – “That Reminds Me” by Derek Osuwu is one of the best books I have read in the last year with its 80+ short verses, told in a mixture of present and past tense, each representing a fragmentary and impressionistic memory. That author has remarked “Writers of colour aren’t really given the space to be experimental.”

And this book also seems a great contender for the prize.

I am also a fan of fine dining – and one trope that features regularly there (and particularly appeals to me) is the idea of “deconstruction” – normally of a classic dish stripped down and reinterpreted by the chef. It is a term (and practice) popularised by the legendary chef Ferran Adrià of “elBulli” and a term he took from Jacques Derrida, It is appropriate then that this book – which I would very much describe as a “deconstructed novel” features two epigraphs – the second that with which I open my review, the first by Derrida.

Like the staff in a good restaurant explaining the concept of a dish before it is being served – Meena Kandasamy’s preface explains both the book’s origins (the reaction to her previous novel “When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife” – judged simply on its biographical details not its artistic intents), its foundations (as an oulipo aimed at writing a novel deliberately removed from her own story), its title (the Surrealist game of consequences – where players take turns to control the narrative flow).

And this concept carries over to the book – which is written as two interacting texts: a main narrative (a tale of Karim a Tunisian-born filmaker based in London, and Maya his English born partner) and a commentary on the writing process written in smaller font in the outside margins. The book consists of a series of short chapters, each thematically self-contained and I think the best way to read the book is a chapter at a time – reading first one set of text (I preferred the main narrative first) and then the other, and then going back to the first set of text to see how it interacts with the second set.

We see then how the author’s life, preoccupations and Google explorations cause the “main” narrative to develop and take different turns and to explore different themes and ideas, and of course how that means that the concept of separation naturally collapses somewhat.

Some examples: with the news (and her writing) dominated by stories like Windrush/Meghan/Shamima Begum – she decides to make Maya of unspecified mixed-race origins and also explore how Maya’s friends react to her Arab-origin boyfriend; her reluctance to write (yet) about her father means she absents herself from a conversation between Maya and Karim on their paternal influences; the way in which Karim’s work is guided and confined mirrors of course her views on the reaction to her own writing; the arrest of her friend and human-rights activist Rona Wilson leads her to “feel conflicted about keeping Maya and Karim in the safe cocoon of domesticity”.

It is a book which: examines the relationship between writer and novel; which explores the porous boundaries between fiction/auto-fiction/memoir/biography; which provocatively questions explicitly why the racial/ethnic identity of the author seems to unconsciously bias where reviewers and readers place the book on that spectrum; and ultimately a book which explores marginalisation in life and art in a very literal way – from the margins of the text.

[Callum McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This experimental novella takes the concept of meta fiction to a whole new level. Throughout its entirety, two separate narratives run in parallel. One is the fictional account of a young couple living in London, attempting to navigate growing tensions within their home and across the globe. The second, written within the margins, is a series of musings on Kandasamy’s own life, giving us an insight into the wider context of the book’s creation, as well as the thoughts and inspirations behind certain key moments.

The book feels incredibly fragmented, and not just because we’re constantly moving back and forth between fiction and reality. Both accounts are sparse, choppy, and non-linear. Though fascinating ideas repeatedly crop up, and Kandasamy’s use of language is stunning (her experience as a poet shines from the page), I found the reading experience itself so jarring that I could never quite find my footing. With the disparate halves rarely aligning as convincingly as I’d hoped, the effort required to try and make them do so meant neither section impacted me as strongly as it could have.

Thus, from a narrative standpoint, I can’t say it enthralled or enlightened me. When looking at the quality of the craftsmanship, however, it is certainly an impressive feat. Kandasamy explains in the preface that she set out to write characters and stories as far removed from her own experience as possible, but ultimately proves that, no matter how hard we try to prevent it, the fears, pressures, and injustices of the real world will always bleed into the worlds we put down on the page. Beyond this, it also offers a unique take on the notions of love, loyalty, and revolution.

Sometimes gorgeous, sometimes alienating; always intellectually stimulating. This is certainly worth a read for those intrigued by the book’s singular concept.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

As she explains in her introduction Exquisite Cadavers is Meena Kandasamy's reaction to the reception of her previous novel When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, where she felt a book that, while containing elements of auto-fiction, was clearly a novel was at times treated as a memoir. From the margins (see below) of this novel:

The reception reinforced my perception that, to a Western audience, writers like me are interesting because

– we are from a place where horrible things happen, or,

– horrible things have happened to us, or,

– a combination of the above.

No one discusses process with us.

No one discusses our work in the framework of the novel as an evolving form.

No one treats us as writers, only as diarists who survived.

In my third outing as a novelist, I want to preserve me for myself. I want to create characters as removed as far as possible from my own life.

This novel is rather like a Richard Rogers construction (the Lloyds Building or Pompidou Centre) with the artist's workings, normally implicit only in the finished text, here openly on display on the outside of the text. Around 60% of each page is taken up with the fictional story (which, on a stand alone basis is barely novella length, more a novelette), with Kandasamy's own thoughts and musings, and political observations, running alongside in small font in the margin.

The marginalia, or the smaller column on the side, documents the various inspirations, they are like a diary of what is going on in my life at that moment of writing, and deal with where ideas, political contexts, preoccupations come from. The main text – the story of Karim and Maya – is something that is birthed out of this raw material.

So, there’s no question of deciding which notes accompany which chapter – because the notes are sometimes the concrete that goes into building the narrative of that chapter, sometimes they are a two-way mirror into what goes on in that chapter. As the story progresses, we see that the life and experiences and inspirations of the author begin to either find parallels, or inverse representations in the story of the characters as well. Sometimes, the margins remain silent (as during the portrayal of the fathers) – and allow the characters to forge a world all of their own.

Because I had taken it upon myself to painstakingly note down where the inspiration and raw material was coming from, or to chronicle my preoccupations at the time of writing a chapter – the book evolved in a series of chapters – and the next chapter (both texts) wouldn’t begin until there was a narrative resolution to the previous texts.

(from https://scroll.in/article/949422/i-wr...)

The open dialogue between her thought and the creation of the novel, and in particular the way each chapter fragment is completed, before the next inspiration takes hold, gives the story a deliberately fragmentary feel. Indeed Exquisite Cadavers takes its name from the Surrealist's version of the game of Consequences, the name itself taken from one of the phrases that resulted when they first played a verbal version "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau." And the idea resurfaces in the partly made movies of Karim and his film-maker friends:

Thinking about this takes her back to the languid late afternoons with Karim's friends. Like a game of consequences, everyone parades the corpses of their never-made movies, embellishing them to the last detail. In these abandoned projects, they are recklessly imaginative: archival montage mixed with local rap videos, staged scenes of torture intercut with speeches by the telegenic dictators (their own Ben Ali, the neighbour's Qaddafi), the bread-riots overlaid on home-cooking YouTube videos that used copious amounts of harissa. A portfolio of these stillborn, miscarried bodies was an integral part of any struggling filmmaker's repertoire. Neglected ideas, fragments, vignettes, anecdotes could go around the room all day with little risk. Never having been exposed to the harsh outside world, lacking the physicality of realized films, these ghost-like creatures could travel, could ceaselessly circulate. Although these thoughts appeared pointless in the instant, they slowly added up to something over time.

Perhaps inevitably the idea to "preserve me for myself. .. to create characters as removed as far as possible from my own life" doesn't entirely succeed, but I don't think it was meant to. Instead Kandasamy makes powerful points about the micro-aggressions that underlie even sympathetic treatment of art from non-mainstream groups and the inherent whiteness of the literary avant-garde, points that echo those made in Isabel Waidner's work particularly her Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature. And like Waidner's previous novel We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff, this is a book that surely deserves a place on the Goldsmith's material.

As separate pieces the novelette and the personal polemic aren't entirely satisfying but creatively juxtaposed as they are they make a powerful work of literature, one to which the cover (see here for an interview with the designer: https://spinemagazine.co/articles/car...) also contributes.

[Vartika · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was blown away by Kandasamy’s previous novel, When I Hit You; Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife – a brilliant, blazing autofiction about marital abuse and ideological blindness that has yet to be displaced as one of the most powerful feminist books I have ever come across. Unfortunately, reviewers in the West were not so perceptive: even as the book was shortlisted for the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction, most read this finely-wrought novel as a memoir, diminishing the formal and artistic achievement into a (comparatively) simplistic narrative from the kind of writer who is interesting to them because

- we are from a place where horrible things happen, or
- horrible things have happened to us, or
- a combination of the above.

Indeed, anglophone writers from the so-called Global South are often seen as imitators of the form, while the form itself is seen – by literary critics and readers alike – as something that evolves through Western (and, primarily, European) innovation. As Kandasamy herself states in Exquisite Cadavers,

No one discusses process with us.
No one discusses our work in the framework of the novel as an evolving form.
No one treats us as writers, only as diarists who survived.

Here, then, she sets out to write a novel that “preserves [her] for [her]self,” baring her creative process to her audiences alongside its product in marginalia that, like a diary, documents every inspiration and contextualises where the “ideas, political contexts, preoccupations” for her fictional narrative come from. In her own words,

…the notes are sometimes the concrete that goes into building the narrative of that chapter, sometimes they are a two-way mirror into what goes on in that chapter. As the story progresses, we see that the life and experiences and inspirations of the author begin to either find parallels, or inverse representations in the story of the characters as well. Sometimes, the margins remain silent (as during the portrayal of the fathers) – and allow the characters to forge a world all of their own.

Exquisite Cadavers is an avant-garde work that cuts against the reception of When I Hit You, an oulipo with each chapter written in real time and as an individual unit. The author borrows her title from a game of consequences played by the surrealists, and her technique itself plays upon French deconstruction as well as the motifs and concepts (“Yaadum oore, yaavarum kelir”) of Tamil poetics. Her mission statement comes in the form of an epigraph from the Caribbean writer M. NourbeSe Philip: “The purpose of avante-garde writing for a writer of colour is to prove you are human." It contextualises how the work itself functions to lay claim to the intellectual space that is generally not afforded to writers like her, one where the author can break down rules and structures to fit their story rather than trying to fit it into what she calls "a hand-me-down form."

The story Kandasamy tells here is one of an interracial, intercultural relationship between Maya, a British woman of mixed birth, and her husband Karim, a film-making student from Tunisia, who, as an immigrant artist on scholarship, has to fight the impulse and institutional pressure to self-commodify. The author is here writing into existence characters who are as far removed from her life as possible, and the tensions in their marriage come from both external pressures in their owl reality, like Islamophobia and Brexit, and those that Kandasamy herself is engaging with as the citizen of a country thrown into political turmoil by “the political juggernaut of the fascistic Hindutva right-wing.”

Purposefully fragmented, Exquisite Cadavers deliberately positions the author’s own state of mind quite literally in parallel to that of her characters, with both influencing each other transparently to allow for the recording of the former's real-world preoccupations at the same time as it provides her “the safe blanket of fiction to explore the emotional state of political displacement via Karim.”

For me, this technique reduces the need for Kandasamy's audiences to "read between the lines," focusing their attention away from mining the explicitness of biography and into the manner in which all fiction works along the author's positioning within their particular physical, socio-political, and mental context. What the reader is faced with here is not merely these two stories, but also insights on film criticism, sexual violence and #MeToo, immigration, selfhood and the relationship it has to history both national and familial, and the two-edged sword of liberal identity politics (Kandasamy is a Marxist).

Together, the corpus is an extraordinary artistic achievement, where truth and fiction are held together by a poetic language that seamlessly merges both domestic and political, the discriminatory and the intimate. This could easily come off as overly clever and self-indulgent from a lesser writer, but the author here succeeds in drawing readers in, and having us examine the creative merits of her experiment instead of her personal life, even as the latter is laid bare in the margins.

Aside from being a singular literary accomplishment, Exquisite Cadavers also exhibits a unique creative partnership between the author and her publishers. Kandasamy dedicates the book to her editor at Atlantic, Bobby Mostyn-Owen, with whom she was working for the first time and who provided direct and pointed advice, while also supporting authorial control in terms of text design pagination (Kandasamy wrote the book on InDesign, back when it was still known as PageMaker) and format (the two worked together to keep the hardback at an RRP of £5, matching the author's political ideas and making her work accessible). Even the cover design by Carmen R. Balit was created with the experimental spirit of the novel in mind, with the designer given a degree of creative freedom virtually unheard of in the contemporary publishing landscape.

Overall, Exquisite Cadavers is a real delight, as powerful in form as it is engaging in narratives. Despite the fragmentary text(s) and the 'open' ending, it is one of the few novels I have read lately that feel complete and fulfilling in every aspect.

[Bram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little novel absolutely blew me away with its structural innovation, smashing down the wall between the author and the work they produce. Exquisite Cadavers is a dual narrative. Its primary (imagined) story is about Karim, a Tunisian immigrant, and Maya, his English wife. Struggling to make ends meet, and in the face of constant casual racism, theirs is a love circumscribed by the realities of Brexit-era London. Meanwhile, in the margins, Kandasamy tells her own story of writing the book, giving us a glimpse into the way her own life and observations - particularly of the abysmal treatment of women, political dissidents and minorities in Modi's India - inform Karim and Maya's story. Absolutely astounding.

[Rakhi Dalal · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a quick and fascinating read. Experimental in form, it presents before reader a story of a young couple living in London juxtaposed with writer's own journey while writing it.

[Abbie | ab_reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars - so unique and a rare insight into a writer’s life as they write. Full review to come!

[Kracekumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite Cadavers, an excellent work of fiction set in the time of political divide and rise of the extreme political right in Britain and India. Meena Kandasamy's two columnar storytelling hooked me to read it in two sittings. The style, voice, and format are new to me and addictive. I completed one column for ten pages and forget there is another column to read, went back and reread. While I was reading, I was contemplating, how could be the experience of reading Kafka on Shore in a similar format.

What astonishes me is the experimentation in the last novel - When I hit you and in the current book — shattering the convention of the fixed fiction format and voice and expectation for the readers.

The writing brilliance excels where the Tamil poems, landscapes, philosophy gels well in the English language and London for every immigrant.

The novel is an absolute reading in the time of human madness destroying humans. Pick up this book!

[Arathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus fucking Christ. What a fantastic piece of work. I am so saddened by the state of the world right now, and this book is so reflective of that feeling of doom and rage. She writes with such eloquence; no word out of place, the emotions she wants to elicit crescendo as the book progresses. What a brave thing it is to live and love and pursue art in these times, she seems to say. But, also how trite. How do you integrate the domestic and the political; but how can you not?

[Chitra Ahanthem · Rating 4 out of 5]

How much of an author is in a book? Does literature and art take shape from and form from the realities around the writer/artiste? How much does an author's real life experiences or belief systems influence her book? Can an author writing literature walk away from it all? 
Meena Kandasamy's Exquisite Cadavers is a demanding book: it asks you to be attuned to the socio political situation of the country, it asks if you to question literary forms and structure. If you are willing to give in to the demands, this intense rumination over where an artistic creator hovers around his/her work is addressed in two tracks: the story of Karim, an Arab film maker and his wife Maya who is caught in between an unstable job being one track and the author's freewheeling or is it selective thoughts written on the margins of the story telling the reader a bit of her world and why she has structured her characters and settings in the milieu they are set. 
Are the two tracks parallel or do they meet at some point or wait, are they entirely separate? Are Karim and Maya the way they are because of the author's own life and beliefs? Meena Kandasamy throws these questions as sharp gauntlets to the reader and literary critics starting and in the process weaves a spell. The writing is sharp and cleaves at you with clinical precision and poetic elegance. Read it if you are prepared to be rattled - it's worth it. 

[Anupama C K(b0rn_2_read) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars
The book is written in a unique format. There is the story of Maya and Karim, and at the margins we get to read the author's thoughts while writing this novel. Her narrative is so lyrical. It is a story which will remind you of the current times.

The format was hard to read. I couldn't follow both stories together. It was frustrating to go back and read the other story after each chapter

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The reception reinforced my perception that, to a Western audience, writers like me are interesting because – we are from a place where horrible things happen, or, – horrible things have happened to us, or, – a combination of the above. No one discusses process with us.”


RATING: 5/5

Leave it to Meena Kandasamy to conjure up such a complex work of literature in barely a hundred pages all the while challenging writer-ly expectations in the most brilliant ways. Written in two narrative strands going on simultaneously next to each other on paper, but not often in parallel tandem, the novella breaks the fourth wall and brings the author's memoiristic insights to bear on her own fiction leading to a mixing of the two forms and how they affect each other. The fragmented nature of the book also compliments the nature of our current reality, an act of escapism that remains anchored in its dismal means of production.

Kandasamy's distinct voice refuses to be confined to the margins and reality imposes itself upon fiction. Layer by layer, the artifice which constructs the art is unpeeled and laid bare for the reader. There comes a point where Karim and Maya take a backseat and Meena Kandasamy herself takes centre stage as the margin overpowers the centre. Her own life bleeds onto the page, despite her stated intention of keeping her life and work, personal and political, separate. An impressive creative fiction feat with gorgeous writing, it reaffirms the fact that the ground we stand on is extremely shaky at best. The centre cannot hold.

[Aswathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.

The clattering waits in the wings, romps around within four walls, impatient to join the chequerboard of greyscale cityscapes, wills itself to collapse into familiar rhythm.

I couldn’t figure out how to read this book at first and kept delaying it. Once I got the hang of it, boy was it a riveting read! The novel is accompanied by the author’s notes, of her life and thoughts, written on one side of the vertically split pages along with the progression of the story. You can chose whichever way to read this. An experimental format that puzzled me a lot but have come to admire.

The title apparently is derived from the French surrealist game, Cadavre Exquis. According to the rules, the players are to reassemble a collection of words or pictures to make a story. The author gives us fragments of her life and challenges us to create the novel along with her. Brilliant!

It is the story of a young married couple and their love. As simple as that. Unlike the love in old classic romance novels or the ones in contemporary young adult romances, this is rooted in the reality of an interracial multicultural union.

Every film transforms into a template that she can customize into her own story, a colouring book with no humiliating constraints of lines that could not be blurred. hard relate heh.

she elects to walk with deliberate pride

I love this book.

[Charlotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy is a real treat for those who love scathing political commentary, real relationships, and experimental writing styles. This slim book packs a lot into its 100 pages. When Kandasamy wrote her previous novel, When I Hit You, she described it as auto-fiction which drew heavily from her own experiences. Too often, critics and readers were referring to it as a memoir and she became frustrated that her words were being ignored in the process. So she wrote this book and while we are reading the story of Maya and Karim we are also, in the margins, getting a look at the authors thougt process while writing. What we get is this fantastic book!
Whether we are reading about female Tamil Tiger fighters, Bollywood, immigration, racism, BFI (British Film Institute) searches of the word 'husband', activists being arrested, and state sanctioned murder it is all set to the backdrop of a quarrelsome couple whose deep love for each other simmers just under the surface but is always there. Do yourselves a favour and spend the six quid to grab a copy and see for yourselves.

[Jess Donn · Rating 5 out of 5]

give me more short experimental fiction where the writer shows you their thoughts. I loved this.

[Shruti Santosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meena Kandasamy's When I hit you is easily one of the best pieces of literature I've read and recommended. Exquisite Cadavers is a reaction to the genre When I hit you was pushed and misconstrued into - read and reviewed as a memoir - placed in a genre the author did not construct the book as - in truth, a piece of auto-fiction. In Exquisite Cadavers, the author has removed her own self away from the book - narrating the story of a man and a woman in London - a marriage that's frail, wavering, eccentric, operating alongside political shifts, marital demands, and cultural history.

In the margins, is the author's own story, recounts from her own life, as a partner, a mother, an author, and an intrepid commentary on a dissent-less political climate.

A semi-fiction, semi-reality book - a literary experiment done so well.

[Sookie · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the margins of the story she is writing, Meena Kandasamy jots down her thoughts on happenstances. There is no direct co-relation to the story and her private thoughts but it is evident that some of the news that has deeply affected the writer, has somewhat impacted the story.

[Roshan Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Exquisite Cadavers' is the most innovative book I have read this year. The format of the book is unlike anything I have read before. Meena Kandasamy has separated the personal from her fiction in the literal sense. Each page is divided into two parts : one has her personal thoughts and the other has the fictional story. Although the two portions are separate, they are not different. I read the 'memoir' first and that did not just introduce me to the author, but also made me aware of her reality; a reality clenched with violence both personal and political.

The fictional story that she pens is a deeply political saga of a couple trying to find their feet in London. I loved how she has captured the little nuances of the relationship. Her fiction is very real. If you hope to find an escape in this book, you will be very disappointed. This book is as real as the world around us and there's no escaping the injustices and chaos that our world has become.

[Nisreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meena Kandasamy’s “Exquisite Cadavers;” is an exquisite experimental narrative that fits perfectly within her life work as a feminist, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist. I was reading the books just as neighbours were celebrating with fireworks the UK’s departure from the EU.
The darkness is so intense, yet Kandasamy is such a bright burning light of hope.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more, and even though the subject matter was interesting enough, the structure of this small novel didn't work for me. The two stories being told next to each other on the same page confused me and distracted me.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in a strange, confusing, absolutely fascinating unique format that combines the story of fictional London couple Karim and Maya in the main part and the author's own musings and comments in the margins, this exquisitely written experimental novella packs an astonishing punch.

[Jazmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was too short!!! It took me way too long to figure out the best way to read it: chapter first, then the notes in the margins after. It was so good. I have to read everything this author has ever written.

[Mandy Marsden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a bold and masterful experiment which delivered a lyrical, powerful book. Just beautiful.

[Marc Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 star deeply flawed. Video review -https://youtu.be/uwMlQArOig0

[Maddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had me grappling with the best way to personally read it - I started reading each column of text on each page, then going to the next, but sometimes they spilled across. Then I alternated by chapter - first reading all of Kandasamy's notes, then all of the fictional couple, then the opposite in the next chapter. It was remarkable in the middle of the book when I suddenly felt as though I was reading two parallel narratives, forgetting that it was the author and her life reaching through, only to be rudely awakened and returned to the reality when she mentioned writing of Karim and Maya, her creations.

[Kornelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

gorgeous style Oscar-baity prose à la narrative theory hon hon hon but kind of hollow, too on-the-nose fragmentation, hard to read, hard to fall in love with the characters, not funny enough

[Zoya · Rating 4 out of 5]

An experimental novel with the main plot being about two lovers who are far removed from the author's own life, which unravels in the marginalia. I love that Meena keeps pushing the boundaries of what writers can and should do, by juxtaposing her "novel" with her own creative process. Incredible work, as always.