India, July 16 -- Dystopic fiction transports readers into an uncomfortable space that eerily helps us make better sense of our own time, its politics, and of human nature. This has been the case with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984. It is the case too with Gyan Chaturvedi's Pagalkhana (2018). Now translated into English as The Madhouse by Punarvasu Joshi, this poignant tale by one of Hindi literature's most prominent names oscillates between humour and a philosophical examination of reality, the thin lines between the sane and the insane.

The author's fifth novel and among his most critically acclaimed works, The Madhouse, an incisive portrayal of Post-Liberalisation India, does not revolve around a single centr...