Exquisite Cadavers

Karim, a young film-maker, carries with him the starry-eyed dreams of the Arab Revolution. Maya carries her own pressing concerns: an errant father, an unstable job, a chain-smoking habit, a sudden pregnancy. When Karim's brother disappears in Tunis, and Karim wants to go after him, Maya must choose between her partner and her home city, her future and her history. In a conversation between forms, fictions and truths, Exquisite Cadavers is a novel about a young couple navigating love in London, and a literary hall of mirrors about an author navigating the inspirations behind her work.

"This is hands-down the most emotionally resonant book I have read this year. In this fragmented literary experiment, Kandasamy flawlessly combines the political and the personal with her searing insight and dazzling literary prowess." —Book Riot

"Kandasamy is needling us gleefully, making the margins a space of defiance, and the repossession of authorial prerogative. She is showing us the sleight of hand in slow motion, and grinning from ear to ear as she does so. . . . Exquisite Cadavers is a backflipping rebuke to the nexus of culture- and capital-making which would seek to backhandedly praise her bravery over her craft, and thereby keep her pushed to the sidelines. It is a joy." -- LA Review of Books

"It's wonderful, a different view of difference." —LitHub

"Slyly funny and profoundly thoughtful. It is common for critics and readers to belittle women by assuming they write out of catharsis rather than to create. Exquisite Cadavers is not just a fierce rebuttal. It's a work of brilliance." —Financial Times

"Fascinating . . . The cleverness of Kandasamy's bricolage is that it allows her to explicitly separate fiction and memoir, while ensuring they're intimately intertwined." —Guardian

"Kandasamy achieves the unachievable in this genre-defying, brilliant and satisfying double narrative. She subverts the mainstream by inserting her self into the margins of this timely novella. In doing so, she adds depth and intensity to an already gripping story of a mixed-race millennial couple grappling with identity, unexpected parenthood, zero-hour contracts and nearsightedness within academia. There is nothing Kandasamy can't do." —Zeba Talkhani, author, My Past is A Foreign Country

“Urgent, searing.”—The New York Times Book Review on When I Hit You 

“Kandasamy’s thoughtful deep dive into the nature of abuse and its effects is a call-to-action to believe and support all women.”―Booklist (Starred review) on When I Hit You

 

Meena Kandasamy is a poet, fiction writer, translator and activist who was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms. Militancy, and the critically acclaimed novel, Gypsy Goddess. Her second novel, When I Hit You, was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for fiction 2018.