Last Earth Review by Deepa Annapara – To the ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ in Tibet | imaginary

WWith her peripatetic and philosophical second novel, Deepa Annapara travels into uncharted territory. Her dazzling 2020 debut, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, was part caper, part social satire, set in an Indian shantytown. In The End of the Earth, she turns her writing compass toward the mountains of mid-nineteenth-century Tibet—a region then closed to European imperialists—to reflect on the checkered history of colonial exploration, cartography, and the impermanence of human existence.

“It is in the nature of white men to believe that they own the world, and that no door should be closed to them.” For years, the British had trained, persuaded, and bribed the Indians to cross, and conducted surveys on their behalf; They also venture into the “Forbidden Kingdom of Tibet” with veiled masks. Meticulously researched and plotted, this immersive novel is told through the alternating points of view of two of the novel’s protagonists. Balram is an Indian schoolteacher and surveyor-spy who plays guide to an English captain dressed as a monk who intends to be the first man to personally chart the course of the venerable Cangpo River and discover where it meets the sea. Meanwhile, Catherine, who is partly of Indian descent, is on a mission to become the first European woman to reach Lhasa and set her sights on the Potala Palace after being denied membership of the all-male Royal Geographical Society in London.

They each embark on an epic and perilous journey through “a strange country whose terrain changes every few miles,” and their paths are bound to cross. The cast of characters finds that “at eighteen thousand feet above sea level, here they were closer to gods than to men, but this proximity to the divine brought them no blessings, only burdens.” Storms, snow leopards, soldiers, winding rivers, and the full power of the elements are only minor obstacles on their path to glory, writing history, and leaving their mark on the world. The true test will ultimately boil down to human feelings and emotions: arrogance, obsession, suspicion, power, guilt, and sadness.

Like many journeys, Annapara’s novel is full of false starts, false stops, digressions, and revisions. In scale and architecture, it is reminiscent of modern novels such as Janice Barriat’s Everything Touches the Light and Kinpham Seng Nongkinrih’s Funeral Nights. This is also where maps are deceiving. History deviates from the truth. The natural world is alive. Death always looms around the corner. “The lines the captain had drawn on paper seemed to Balram nothing more than a child’s scribbles in the mud. If the earth shook, the mountains would crack, the rivers would flow, the seas would swallow cities and fields alike, and every map would become incoherent.”

The greedy and dirty colonial project is swallowing up entire communities and landscapes. Because “that’s how the world used to work.” The white man had a desire, and to satisfy it the black men gave up their lives. How many indigenous men died triangulating Hindustan for the Great Trigonometric Survey? Balram didn’t know because there was no book or map that recorded their names or numbers.” Balram often hears the voices of those left behind: his best friend Jian, a fellow spy surveyor rumored to be imprisoned in Tibet, and his wife and children. The death of Catherine’s sister Ethel motivates and haunts her on her journey and memoir on the road. The Last of Earth is meticulous in excavating our frightening and imperfect past.

Late in the novel, Balram says that “the river was not a blue swirl on a map, but a living being, a creature capable of regeneration. It emptied itself into the sea and remade itself every few months.” In The End of the Earth, Anabara shows that history is also often not what it seems; It’s a living thing, which, when recast in a different light—that of the novelist—can offer a renewal of sorts.

• The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara is published by Oneworld (£14.99). To support The Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.