India, Dec. 19 -- This year, two works of literary fiction blew me away, both as a research scholar working on texts that may be termed as belonging to the genre of 'migrant fiction' as well as a literary critic. These were Fierceland by Omar Musa and Gurnaik Johal's Saraswati. What stood out about both was their play with form, their use of English that reflected hybridity as well as the geographically broad scope of their texts that unravelled across continents and political contexts.

Musa's Fierceland is the story of two siblings Rozana and Harun who are the heirs to the blood money of their palm oil tycoon father, Yusuf. From Malaysian Borneo to Sydney and Los Angeles, the brother-sister protagonists of Musa's tale encounter their fa...