‘The novels I write are pretty much an excuse to indulge my delight in language’: Rohit Manchanda

Rohit Manchanda is the Betty Trask Award-winning author of A Speck of Coal Dust and The Enclave. The former is set in the early 1970s and follows Vipul, a young boy growing up in a coal town in Bihar, as he navigates the path from childhood to adolescence and from innocence to acceptance. The latter takes place in Bombay of the early aughts, where Maya juggles a string of lovers and faces an internal, mid-life reckoning that destabilises her career, relationships, and ego. Both novels are peppered with unusual characters – from comic book stealing swamis to socialist typographers – that shape the protagonist's life, pushing them into new spheres of thought. Manchanda's novels are laced with a unique wit and style that can transform the most ubiquitous moment into existential arcs. In an interview with Scroll, Manchanda unpacked the philosophies and inner lives of his characters. Excerpts from the conversation.

A Speck of Coal Dust was initially released decades ago and has now been re-released alongside The Enclave. It's hard not to see them as companion books, or The Enclave as a spiritual successor to A Speck. Do you feel they are connected in some way?
In the sense of the plainly evident, there are many differences between the books. A Speck of Coal Dust is about...

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