‘Leaf, Water, and Flow’: An ingeniously structured novel that questions how we read and write

I should warn you about a few things that this review will not do. It won’t tell you what this novel is about, only because it can’t. It will not say that it is “avant-garde”, “experimental”, “niche,” or “post-modern.” It can’t tell you what its plot is, either (spoiler alert: there isn’t one – or, there isn’t just one). And how could it settle with calling it a critique of communism, or revolution, or the state – or even all of them at once – after looking at the words in its title: Leaf, Water and Flow?

The author Avadhoot Dongare puts together this “collage” for us in his novel, translated into English by the translator Nadeem Khan. The narrator, though, is someone else entirely, “ajnya” – a combination of the first and last letter of the Marathi alphabet, (a) and (jnya), we are told, which happens to mean “unknowledgeable.” Then, to reduce the text’s maddening movements between voices, perspectives, and characters to known genres would be insufficient, if not incorrect. The Maoist insurgency forming the backdrop for many chapters makes this a particularly tempting enterprise; the tragedy of victims caught in the crossfire between revolutionaries and the state, characters that exemplify evangelical revolutionaries, and...

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