Book review: Sujit Saraf's ‘Island’ ponders questions of civilization
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Sujit Saraf’s new novel, Island, takes its cue from a macabre tragedy that shook the world in 2018.
In November that year, a 26-year-old American missionary John Allen Chau sailed over to North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal to convert the Sentinelese, a voluntarily isolated and mostly uncontactable tribe living in the Andamans for thousands of years. Defying Indian laws that protect these ancient people from outside incursions, he made multiple attempts to reach them, before being killed by an arrow shot by a member of the tribe.
Saraf gives a fictitious twist to this incident, layering it with research and audacious imagination. “The absurdity of the situation was too rich to pass up," says the Indian-born, US-based writer, playwright and techie, when we meet at a Delhi bookshop.
“It’s exciting to reimagine ‘what if’ scenarios in fiction—in this case, what if Chau had succeeded in his mission?" Also read: Saurabh Kirpal's ‘Who is Equal’: A return to first principles In his earlier novels, notably in the award-winning Harilal & Sons (2017) and The Confession of Sultana Daku (2009), Saraf used recorded history and lores with powerful effect to retell stories that delve into questions of identity, belonging and contested legacies. In Island, he returns to a similar terrain and packs in a punch: a literary novel brimming with ideas that also moves at the pace of a detective thriller.
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