A tale of redemption and reclamation

Prayaag Akbar's highly anticipated second novel, Mother India, attempts to address the ambitions of ordinary young people in present-day India, and the dizzying anxieties around the reach and powers of the internet.

- Saudamini Jain

Twenty-something Mayank works at a propaganda kitchen, in the dingy basement office of a YouTube influencer. He uses AI to cook up dramatic videos targeting Muslims, liberals, leftists, all the people that his boss Vikram Kashyap deems the enemies of Mother India — "PhD-waale. Jihadis. Khalistanis. Maoists and missionaries" — because "if they dared to disrespect our mother, they're going to have to pay."

And so, when Mayank lands on the Instagram profile of a beautiful green-eyed girl from the hills, he decides to use her face, altered only slightly by AI, to represent Mother India in a video. On either side, he inserts drawings of two Muslim boys throwing rocks at her. This video goes viral, unbeknownst to the real-life woman whose face has been stolen for it.

Nisha is a salesgirl at a luxury Japanese chocolate store in Delhi, where she is in a secret relationship with her obnoxious boss. Back home, her brother-in-law is a local reporter investigating unusual forest fires in the mountains. This is a tale of perpetrator and victim, of redemption and reclamation.