Time Outside This Time

From the acclaimed author of Immigrant, Montana comes a one-of-a-kind novel about memory, politics, a world of lies, and the ways in which truth can be not only stranger than fiction, but a fiction of its own.'A shimmering assault on the Zeitgeist.' – The New YorkerWhen Satya attends a prestigious artists’ retreat, he finds the pressures of the outside world won’t let up: the US president rages online; a dangerous virus envelops the globe; and the twenty-four-hour news cycle throws fuel on every fire. These Orwellian interruptions begin to crystallize into an idea for his new novel 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.As he sifts through newspaper clippings, the President’s tweets, childhood memories from India, and experiences as an immigrant, a husband, father, and teacher, Amitava Kumar’s A Time Outside This Time captures our feverish political moment with a precisely observant intelligence and an eye for the uncanny.A brilliant meditation on life in a post-truth era, this piercing novel captures the sentiment on all our minds, of how impossible it can feel to remember, or to imagine, a time outside of this one.

In this age of lies, can we rely on fiction to cover the facts? Amitava Kumar’s entertaining and incisive A Time Outside This Time provides a convincing answer . . . necessary and beautiful., A brilliant, expansive account of one man’s attempt to follow his moral compass through a maze of disinformation and discord. Kumar has an uncanny ability to find and illuminate the radiance that remains in our half-ruined world., Beautiful, deft and full of memorable details . . . A Time Outside This Time is a courageous book, incredibly relevant for the present moment and crucial for imagining a better future., Like a modern Orwell or Thoreau, Amitava Kumar explores the dangers of disinformation and the ways politics shape our everyday lives. Sensuous and searching, this is an absorbing portrait of an inspired artist in the midst of our maddening cultural moment., Amitava Kumar has the precious ability to write across borders and cultures. This brilliant, learned, and anguished novel succeeds in inventing a new vantage point on our agitated and bewildering world.

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 the novel Immigrant, Montana, as well as several other books of non-fiction and fiction. In 2016, Kumar was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (General Non-fiction) as well as a Ford Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists. He lives in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, where he is Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College.