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The Truth in Fiction
Fiction as a Response to Political and Historical Events
Speakers
Why do major political and historical events often take up to a decade to become a theme in fiction, unlike non-fiction, where books start to appear within a year? What are the ways in which a society processes politics through fiction as compared with other forms of text and narrative?
These are some of the questions that author Devika Rege will take up in her talk on the process of crafting and researching Quarterlife, a novel about young Indians finding their politics in a time of rising Hindu nationalism. A conversation with the author and journalists Aakar Patel and Rohini Mohan will follow. The event will close with an audience Q&A, where the panel’s task will be no less than to explore the truth value of fiction in a post-truth world.
Speakers
Devika Rege
Devika Rege was born and raised in Pune. Her first novel Quarterlife was published in June 2023 by Fourth Estate, HarperCollins. She holds an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has been a fellow in residence at Yaddo and MacDowell. She currently teaches creative writing at Azim Premji University.
Aakar Patel
Aakar Patel is a well-known syndicated columnist who has edited English and Gujarati newspapers. He has written several books of non-fiction which include, Why I Write, A translation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s Urdu non-fiction (Tranquebar, 2014), Our Hindu Rashtra: What It Is. How We Got Here, a study of majoritarianism in India and Pakistan (Westland, 2020), The Price of the Modi Years, a history of India after 2014 (Penguin Random House, 2021) and The Anarchist Cookbook, a guide on why and how to protest (HarperCollins, 2022).
Aakar Patel is Chair of Amnesty International India.
Rohini Mohan
Rohini Mohan is a Bangalore-based independent journalist writing on human rights and politics. She has written for publications including The New York Times, Harper’s, Time, The Hindu, Economic Times, Foreign Policy, The Caravan and Huffington Post. She is the author of The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Civil War.
