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Bhatia, Gautam

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

(1988-    ) Indian lawyer, essayist and author, resident in the UK; author of studies in Indian jurisprudence including Offend, Shock, or Disturb: Freedom of Speech Under the Indian Constitution (2015). He is of direct sf interest for the Chronicles of Sumer sequence beginning with The Wall (2020), set in an Earth-like venue at some indeterminate time in what could be the Far Future, where a vast circular self-sufficient City-state has flourished, apparently for millennia, within an armoured Polder [see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]; a Time Abyss may separate the current inhabitants of Sumer from its original Builders, whose motives may have been Utopian in designing a city where form – each concentric layer within the walls is the home of a different class of inhabitant – follows, or maybe commands, function. The protagonist and her family, becoming involved with dissidents and savage repressors of change, enter a time of turmoil, with volume one ending with more than one cliffhanger. In The Horizon (2021), it is revealed that Sumer, which had mistakenly thought to huddle within impermeable walls, has been interacting with the much larger world outside, with some hint that the mysterious initial Builders were complexly motivated, and a sense that from the depths of Time Abyss revelations may come, with Sumer seen as the belated manifestation of old tragedies, deep planetary catastrophes.

Bhatia is currently (2021) Co-Ordinating Editor of Strange Horizons. He should not be confused with Gautam Bhatia (1952-    ), an architect who writes on architecture and politics. [JC]

Gautam Bhatia

born India: 1988

works

series

Chronicles of Sumer

  • The Wall (Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India: HarperCollins India, 2020) [Chronicles of Sumer: pb/]
  • The Horizon (Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India: HarperCollins India, 2021) [Chronicles of Sumer: pb/]

links

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