Deepak Unnikrishnan’s ‘Temporary People’.
Very lucky to have read advance proof copy of this book back last year. As expected, it’s making waves and winning prizes. The book has to be read to be properly appreciated, of course, but here are some reviews which give a sense of why story-telling will always be needed and how social science can put flesh onto the bones of statistics and policy models by engaging with narrative work. An Indian review comes here and and some international ones here, here, here and here.
Temporary People: Unnikrishnan’s prizewinning stories.
Deepak teaches on the writing programme at New York University, Abu Dhabi campus. This is also one of the universities funding and organising the REALM project.
Here’s a couple of interviews with Deepak.
Something interesting is the discord between the bleak stories of Temporary People, (which echoes social policy and migration studies literatures) and some of the stories I have heard down the years, which are for sure often full of ambivalence – but rarely so bleak, and often even positive.
Till now, Deepak and I have only met on email and spoken on the phone, but in January we will get to meet. I’ll post our conversations here.