A Time Outside This Time: A novel
Amitava Kumar
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars
3.50
· 4 ratings · 272 pages · Published: 05 Oct 2021
When Satya, a professor and author, attends a prestigious artist retreat to write, he finds the pressures of the outside world won't let up: the president rages online; a dangerous virus envelopes the globe; and the twenty-four-hour news cycle throws fuel on every fire. For most of the retreat fellows, such stories are unbearable distractions, but for Satya, who sees them play out in both America and his native India, these Orwellian interruptions begin to crystallize into an idea for his new novel, Enemies of the People, about the lies we tell ourselves and one another. Satya scours his life for instances in which truth bends toward the imagined and misinformation is mistaken as fact.
Mixing Satya's experiences—as a father, husband, and American immigrant—with newspaper clippings, the president's tweets, and observations on famous works of art, A Time Outside This Time captures a feverish political moment with intelligence, beauty, and an eye for the uncanny. It is a brilliant interrogation on life in a post-truth era and an attempt to imagine a time outside this one.
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