From Delhi to Providence, Karan Mahajan’s ‘The Complex’ culminates 10 years of research, writing

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - Karan Mahajan's third novel, "The Complex," which follows the descendants of an Indian politician in Delhi and Michigan, hasn't been published yet, but it's already generating buzz in the book world.

A New York Times roundup described it as a "a sweeping tale of political machinations, family drama, betrayal and social transformation," while Kirkus Reviews called it "beautiful and unforgettable" and a "masterly novel, seemingly influenced by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky."

Mahajan, a Brown University associate professor of literary arts, wrote and revised the 448-page novel over the course of about 10 years and has worked on it throughout his tenure at Brown, which began in 2019. He teaches various courses in the Department of Literary Arts, including Advanced Fiction and Structuring and (Destructuring) Novels.

"My favorite class to teach is the Innovations in Indian Literature course because it's rare to get to teach a class like that from the perspective of a creative writer and to speak about the craft elements - not just the historical or literary currents underlying the work," said Mahajan, who lives in Providence. "Teaching it deepens my own connection to subcontinental literature, which is something I'm very steeped in."

Mahajan published his first novel, "Family Planning," in 2008. His 2016 book, "The Association of Small Bombs," was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. He has also published journalistic essays and criticism in publications including the New Yorker and the New York Times.

Ahead of the March 10 release of "The Complex," Mahajan answered questions about the book, his teaching and the influence of his roots in Delhi.

Q: What do you enjoy about teaching in Brown's Department of Literary Arts?

I love that it's renowned for innovation and it's very intellectual and international, both in terms of faculty and the students we attract. It's also a place where I knew I could work between different mediums and forms, which is something I do. As a professor at Brown, the range of things you can do is kind of limitless.

Q: What inspired "The Complex"?

The novel is set in a large, joint family housing complex in Delhi. It's this kind of pressure cooker of a family compound, and the book follows the way the family and the complex change as members of the family go abroad and then come back. It looks at the dynamics between those who immigrate, especially in this case to the U.S., and those who choose to stay. How does it feel to repatriate after you've immigrated, how do you balance all these worlds in your head, and how do you deal with divided loyalties and divided identities. I was interested in that because I've lived in both the U.S. and India, and I have that sense of being suspended between worlds. For me, it was important to dramatize that, and I did it through a series of characters in the novel.

Q: What was the process of writing the novel while teaching at Brown?

This is where Brown's support has been so helpful. The novel was a massive undertaking because it required research on a couple of continents, dealing with several periods of history. I had to go back to India a few times, talk to a lot of people, travel around and read archival material, and I was able to do a lot of that on a teaching sabbatical.

I conducted a lot of research on politics in India in the '80s and '90s and the lives of Indian immigrants in the U.S. in the '70s and '80s. That was fascinating - going memory-surfing with immigrants from that period and reading oral histories and trying to figure out how to accurately represent the attitudes of those immigrants without inflecting them too much with my own experiences. For example, the early generation of Indian immigrants keep saying, 'Oh, we didn't experience any racism.' And I think they were choosing not to see it. Similarly, I also wrote a lot about sexual violence and did a lot of research about the various psychological responses of Indian women to it in the '70s and '80s.

Brown's Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia was also a great resource, and I spoke with affiliated faculty members Prerna Singh and Ashutosh Varshney as part of my research. It's wonderful to be in a university setting, because it's like a nerve center of experts that I can consult for all these different topics I'm writing about. These are the people doing the on-the-ground research, and I can go to them and ask them if what my characters are doing, or the world they're inhabiting, are accurately represented.

Q: What appeals to you about Delhi as a setting for fiction?

I was born in Stamford, Connecticut, but my parents moved back to Delhi when I was 2 years old, and I grew up there. The period of my life that's most alive in terms of writing is the period that exists before I became a writer, where there's this whole mass of memories and material that I haven't analyzed that forms the bedrock of all my experiences. The landscape of Delhi has been really seared into my mind, and it's almost contiguous with my own psychology. In my novels, I'm always filling in small areas of darkness that exist in my own past. I'm wondering, 'What was actually happening in Delhi at this time that I was growing up?' As a kid, you're not fully aware and take your home and city for granted. Moving away and recognizing that it was this interesting place with an interesting history, where major currents of Indian history and international history had played out - and then trying to figure out how this linked in with my own experience as someone who's from a bourgeois, educated background - has been fascinating. That's one great thing about writing books. Even if no one else reads them, you learn so much writing them, and you become so much more aware of what formed you.

Q: How are you feeling as you prepare to launch "The Complex" into the world?

The great thing about having a teaching job and an academic position is that I'm so busy enjoying my students and reading their work that I don't have as much time to fret as I once would have had. I feel very lucky. My publishers, especially in the United States and India, are very excited about it. I spent a long time working on this book - off and on for about 10 years - and I feel like I'm in a rare position with this novel, which is that I can stand confidently behind every sentence, and I feel I understand this entire world in a very deep way. Usually, I finish a novel and I think, 'Oh no, I wish I had a year more to work on this, and I would have made it so much better.'

It's a dense book that's set in India, which is still a foreign place to many American readers. I just hope that readers see themselves and the current moment in the book.

Q: How do you balance writing and teaching?

I tend to write for a couple of hours every morning on weekdays, even when I'm teaching. And that means that I remain in a kind of rhythm, even if I'm not producing that much. I certainly think the two things - teaching and writing - are compatible. Teaching can be tiring because it's extroverted and requires you to be on in a particular way, but it's not a nine-to-five job, which is great for a writer. When you're talking about creative writing with students, you get ideas too, and you're energized by the things that they say. It can really feed you as a writer. The fact that I have to read certain books over and over again is great because I can understand the mechanics or the beauty of a book like "The God of Small Things" much more than I would if I had just read it kind of casually one time.

One of the special things about teaching creative writing and literature is that it's one of the few places where contemporary psychology and contemporary issues can be discussed openly. Students bring in work that is about things that are happening in the world, and you can talk about complex feelings and emotions, and I want that space to exist.

Q: What advice do you find yourself always giving to your students?

I tend to write first drafts very instinctively, and I tell students to trust their instincts and where the energy of the piece is taking them and to not censor themselves too much when they do a first draft. I talk about how I write first drafts by hand, because I'm less distracted than by writing on a screen. And that if I'm writing a little bit by hand every day, let's say of a novel, then the next day, I go and type it up, and I can get back into the flow of the novel, and I can continue.

The class I teach on structuring novels is really about my own struggles with structure. I feel like it's one of the hardest things to do, and I want to offer students a guide to structure that is not the rote one you get from screenwriting advice, but something that allows them to be more playful. I also talk about the importance of patience and time. Sometimes when things are not working, it's not feedback that's going to help them the most. It'll just be putting the work aside and coming back to it when they can look at it more objectively. That's something that I've had to do with this book, for example, at many points.