Review of Avtar Singh’s new pandemic novel, The Pretenders

In The Pretenders, Avtar Singh sets yet another story in the COVID-19 pandemic, after Into The Forest (2024) whose sparse prose and sharp vignettes of characters living in a German village during the first lockdown left a lasting impression.

In April 2021, Shamsher Singh shouts at a man who shows up in his posh Delhi neighbourhood carrying a corpse for cremation. His driver, Sewa Singh, keeps himself occupied in acts of service in the gurudwara. His nephew Farid pines for his lover, Mei, living in Beijing. Mei’s mother is grappling with her marriage and her husband’s paranoia in Jakarta.

Meanwhile, Changez Khan, the one who served Farid and Mei during their time together in Bangkok, struggles to find friendship and connection in isolation. Set across Asia, these characters carry secrets that threaten to reveal themselves in the loud silence and stillness of the Delta wave of the pandemic — a period that wiped off families altogether, left pyres burning, and bodies floating in rivers.

Tension on the page

The opening chapter showing a working-class Muslim man carrying the corpse of his friend across the city in search of a Brahmin to cremate it creates a strong yet grim picture of the lockdown before moving to an upscale part of Delhi. This intensity fades but the story holds forth by connecting the boundaries between past and present, creating mirroring stories between characters.

The novel takes a jibe at the visibility of religion and acts of services, showing that people are who they want to be irrespective of the god they might or might not pray to. Poignantly, Singh features people on the margins and their restricted movements, desire for freedom, and expression and acceptance of love. Lest the reader forgets the severity of those days, the sound of the ambulance serves as a chorus, cutting through the intergenerational friendships, and adding to the tension on the page.

Singh’s prose is both dense and subtle, mastering the art of ‘show, don’t tell’. He deceives his readers, a trademark storytelling tactic, in ways that warm their heart rather than leave them with a feeling of betrayal. The Pretenders should be on everyone’s TBR.

The reviewer is an independent writer based in Sambalpur, Odisha.

The Pretenders

Avtar Singh

Simon & Schuster

₹599