A Time Outside This Time Paperback by Amitava Kumar

Product Details

• Publisher: Penguin Canada (2025-02-11)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 272 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780735241381
• Item Weight: 272.16 grams
• Dimensions: 8.0 x 5.2 x 0.75 cm

“Sensuous and searching, this is an absorbing portrait of an inspired artist in the midst of our maddening cultural moment.” —Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Homeland Elegies

From the acclaimed author of Immigrant, Montana, a one-of-a-kind novel about fake news, memory, and the ways in which truth can be not only stranger than fiction, but a fiction of its own.

When a writer named Satya attends a prestigious artist retreat, he finds the pressures of the outside world won't let up: President Trump rages online; a dangerous virus envelopes the globe; and the 24-hour news cycle throws fuel on every fire. For most of the retreat fellows, such stories are unbearable distractions; but for Satya, these Orwellian interruptions begin to crystalize into an idea for his new novel, Enemies of the People, about the lies we tell ourselves and each other. Satya scours his life for moments where truth bends toward the imagined, and misinformation is mistaken as fact.

Sifting through newspaper clippings, the President's tweets, childhood memories from India, and moments as an immigrant, a husband, father, and teacher, A Time Outside This Time captures our feverish political moment with intelligence, beauty, and an eye for the uncanny. It is a brilliant meditation on life in a post-truth era. In the midst of the global pandemic, stretching on indefinitely, this piercing novel flawlessly captures the sentiment on everyone's mind of how impossible it can feel to remember, or to imagine, a time outside of this one.

About the Author

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 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 a Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College.