Rohit Manchanda spent his childhood in the coalfields of Jharkhand and did his doctorate from the University of Oxford. He is a professor at IIT Bombay where he researches computational neurophysiology and, in a parallel world, writes fiction. His first novel was published as In the Light of the Black Sun in 1996, and is being republished titled A Speck of Coal Dust simultaneously with a new novel, The Enclave. He has also authored Monastery, Sanctuary, Laboratory, a history of IIT Bombay. Manchanda has won several awards for his teaching, including an INSA Teachers Award, and for his writing a Betty Trask Award and a Tibor Jones South Asia Prize.
<p>‘A sharp, and often hilarious, portrait of womanhood in post-liberalization India’ – AMRITA MAHALE</p><p>‘Full of wonders … cunningly observant, rapturous, profoundly wise, and often funny’ – AMIT CHAUDHURI</p><p>‘Exquisitely transparent prose and finely tuned dialogue’ – ARUNAVA SINHA</p><p>‘Addictive’ – SUMANA ROY</p><p>Freewheeling, in her early forties, lately divorced, Maya is happy in her job, happy with her crop of friends and lovers, and is enjoying a halcyon spell in Bombay, the city she loves and has made her home.</p><p>The Enclave traces the run of Maya’s days as she goes about her work as a liaison officer, her trysts with her amours, her spirited engagement with the world at large, and her writerly ambitions – each of which comes with its joys and vexations. But then, things start to unravel. And Maya finds herself at an unsettling crossroads, where she must grapple with anger, grief and the precariousness of things hitherto taken for granted.</p><p>Set in the late 2000s, Rohit Manchanda’s new novel is a finely observed, brilliantly wrought, tender yet humorous evocation of a time when the country’s middle classes began savouring the fruits of economic liberalization, a newfound material well-being, and a broadening of social and cultural mores – a time, briefly, when so much seemed possible.</p>
