Workshop
Mithu Sanyal in conversation with Chitra Ramaswamy

Join us for a hybrid reading and converstation with one of Germany’s most exciting contemporary writers!

Sat, 28.10.2023
3:30 PM - 16:30 BST Goethe-Institut Glasgow

German author Mithu Sanyal’s novel Identitti was a critical and popular success in Germany, making it onto the shortlist of the prestigious German Book Prize. In Alta L. Price’s elegant and inventive translation, the novel has been a favourite of independent bookshops in the UK too.

Told from the perspective of post-grad student and blogger Nivedita, Identitti starts when the charismatic postcolonial professor Saraswati – who on the first day of classes had kicked all the white students out of her seminar – is outed; the public intellectual who passes herself off as Indian is actually, it turns out, white. Confronted with the fact that her role model isn’t who she seems, Nivedita finds her own sense of belonging called into question too. Meanwhile, the public outcry and compulsory twitter shitstorm is just getting going. Sanyal draws on a vast array of different voices and perspectives – from critical race theory to a collage of blogs and tweets – to create a darkly comedic tour de force.

Mithu Sanyal (online) will be in conversation with Chitra Ramaswamy, a journalist for media including the Guardian and the award-winning author of Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy and Homelands: The History of a Friendship.

About the author

Mithu Sanyal is a cultural scientist, journalist, critic, and author of two academic books: Vulva, which was translated into five languages, and Rape, which was translated into three languages and published in English by Verso in 2019. Identitti is her first novel.

Join our book club discussing Mithu Sanyal's novel on 14 November!