Title: We of the Forsaken World
Author: Kiran Bhat
Publisher: Iguana Books
ISBN: 978-1771803663
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 216
Reviewed by: Barbara Bamberger Scott

Read Book Review

A world traveler draws many cultures and people together like moveable beads on a long, twisting string in this emotive new work by author Kiran Bhat, We of the Forsaken World.

Bhat, who has lived and traveled in more than 100 countries since leaving his birthplace in the US, is more than a novelist. His visionary fables are separated with a kind of poetic, psychological and indeed psychic linkage which feeds each episode forward. His characters are developed not just in different places, but in a gradually shifting progressive timeframe. To begin, he describes four settings in which the tales will take place: one is a river that flows a rainforest, home to the almost forgotten, almost disappeared “Tribe of the Silt,” a tiny remnant locked in primitive ways who foresee the world’s end. There is a “Global Village” that could be any newly arisen town in a developing country, where denizens deal with the contrast between the alluring world within their cellphones and the poverty and limitations of their locale. “The Lake of Sacred Salt” becomes the scene of cataclysmic tragedy when a once sacred body of water is contaminated by industrial waste. “Black City” is a place that shows stark contrasts: the sleek modernity of the commercial district, the historical plaza and massive cathedral, and the depressing, neglected slums.

Within these settings Bhat has interwoven the lives of numerous intriguing characters who appear, fade and reappear. There’s a milkmaid who is tormented by the cruelty of the more respectable girls’ gossip, and a one-armed beggar who enlists the help of a former “bed sister” to destroy the pimp who enslaved her. A brooding journalist is sent to interview a distraught man whose family has been killed by a chemical spill; a rainforest shaman is visited by horrific visions of the world’s destruction; a fast-food street vendor trades jibes and pleasantries with tourists while musing about his loveless wife; a young gay man finally finds a lover – but not love – through a cellphone website; a famous female writer lives miserably in a mansion, bedeviled by her memories.

Bhat has said that each of the stories is a parable in and of itself, but, because we live in a global village, each conflows with the others in a mystical manner. As one reads, one will inevitably picture a real place – from Paris to New York to the Amazon – and real people one has seen in passing – a street-wise vendor, a flashy young girl, a homeless, haunted figure. The vibrant experiences and scenes depicted, as Bhat says, “Could be directly ripped directly from our headlines.” We of the Forsaken World combines an inventive writing style with familiar sights, cinematic touches, and eerie speculation.