Coming 12 years after his acclaimed debut, Londonstani, Gautam Malkani’s second novel Distortion features a vivid argot, complicating and defamiliarising everyday terms and activities.
In its pages, young people do things in exciting new ways, for example going down stairs: ‘It’s the most longed-out staircase you ever saw. Steps so far apart you gotta keep checking your stride.’ Old-dude technology requires explanation: ‘Deskphone’s got some caller-display screen but it only does its thing if they dial you direct.’ Actually, everything requires explanation, nearly always called ‘mansplaining’, the narrator Dillon/Dhilan/Dylan missing the point that it’s what men do to women they assume are stupid.
Why the three names? I’ll get back to that. It’s not as if Malkani’s in a hurry to tell us. Neologisms abound. Tears are ‘eye saliva’. Imagining something is ‘mentally photoshopping’.
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