A Time Outside This Time

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From Amitava Kumar, a blistering novel about fake news, memory, and the ways in which truth gives over to fiction. When Satya, a professor and writer, attends a prestigious artists' retreat, he finds the pressures of the outside world won't let up: the US president rages online; a dangerous virus envelops 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 playing out in both the USA 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. Braiding Satya's experiences - as a father, husband, author, and teacher - with newspaper clippings, the president's tweets, and observation on famous works of art, Amitava Kumar's 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 of this one.

Reviews

In this age of lies, can we rely on fiction to cover the facts Amitava Kumars entertaining and incisive A Time Outside This Time provides a convincing answer . . . necessary and beautiful. -- Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild
A brilliant, expansive account of one mans attempt to follow his moral compass through a maze of disinformation and discord. Kumar has an uncanny ability to find and illuminate the radiance that remains in our half-ruined world. -- Jenny Offill, author of Weather and Dept of Speculation
Beautiful, deft and full of memorable details . . . A Time Outside This Time is a courageous book, incredibly relevant for the present moment and crucial for imagining a better future. -- Aleksandar Hemon, author of Nowhere Man and The Lazarus Project
Like a modern Orwell or Thoreau, Amitava Kumar explores the dangers of disinformation and the ways politics shape our everyday lives. Sensuous and searching, this is an absorbing portrait of an inspired artist in the midst of our maddening cultural moment. -- Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies
Amitava Kumar has the precious ability to write across borders and cultures. This brilliant, learned, and anguished novel succeeds in inventing a new vantage point on our agitated and bewildering world. -- Joseph ONeill, author of Netherland
Novels this good come along once in a lifetime. Kumar has fashioned a brilliant prophetic meditation on the age of untruth. -- Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Author Bio

Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist. He was born in Ara, India, and grew up in the nearby town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty, and delicious mangoes. Kumar is the author of the novel Immigrant, Montana, as well as several other books of nonfiction and fiction. In 2016, Kumar was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (General Nonfiction) as well as a Ford Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists. He lives in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, where he is Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College.