Temporary People

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Deepak Unnikrishnan's novel-in-stories narrates a series of metamorphoses.... a mosaic of the frenetic, fantastical and fragmented lives of the South Asian diaspora in the United Arab Emirates, one that recalls the cry of its closest forebear, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children: 'Please believe that I am falling apart.' What separates Unnikrishnan from Rushdie, and the vast literature of exile that precedes them, are his subjects. Temporary People explores the lives of arguably the least privileged class of nomads in the twenty-first century: guest workers. Joining the South Indian writer Benyamin's Goat Days, a novel of modern-day enslavement in Saudi Arabia, and the British-Emirati director Ali Mostafa's City of Life, a film that weaves together a cross-section of lives in Dubai, Temporary People is a robust... entry into the nascent portrayal of migrant labor in the Gulf.... Mingling English, Malayalam and Arabic in a series of Kafkaesque parables, Unnikrishnan's book features a lot of action and even some humor.... Temporary People pairs well with an older cousin in nonfiction, John Berger's A Seventh Man. In that stirring cri de coeur about migrant labor in Europe, Berger reminds us of a point that is embedded within Unnikrishnan's stories: Countries that send migrant laborers to global metropolitan centers are often forced to do so.... Unnikrishnan's collection poses its questions obliquely, but demands explicit answers. What causes a society to look like this? -Shaj Mathew, The New York Times Book Review