Across cities, cultures, and digital spaces, people are redesigning not just their bodies, but their relationships, ambitions, and sense of self. And in this moment, when enhancement culture has never been more visible or more fraught, KAAYAA offers a rare and unsettling look at the human desire to hold on to love, identity, and time itself.
Translated from Kannada by Narayan Shankaran
A Novel About the Bodies We Build, the Secrets We Keep, and the Time We Try to Defy
Why This Book Matters
- A Rare Look at Why Humans Try to Hold On to Identity, and Time: Inspired by a real medical case, KAAYAA asks what drives people to go to extraordinary lengths to protect their sense of self, or slow down time’s inevitable erosion.
- Inside the Cosmetic Culture Boom: Set within the world of aesthetic medicine, the novel cuts beneath the glamour to explore beauty as autonomy, medical ethics and vulnerability, the psychology of enhancement and the shadow side of perfection As body modification becomes mainstream, the novel investigates the private stories behind public transformations.
- The Diaspora Body : An Indian Story Inside America’s Reinvention Culture: Largely set in the United States, the novel follows an Indian plastic surgeon whose marriage, ambitions, and emotional life begin to fracture under the pressures of migration. It reveals how the pursuit of the American dream reshapes bodies, relationships, and belonging.
- Love, Power, and a MeToo-Like Reckoning: When the protagonist is named in a public accusation, the story shifts into a tense, gripping exploration of consent and power, ethics within medicine, the collision of private choices with public judgment and the collapse of personal myths. It becomes an intimate study of accountability and self-confrontation.
- A Major Kannada Novel Reintroduced Through Translation: Bold, contemporary, and deeply rooted in lived professional experience, KAAYAA brings a significant Kannada work to new audiences, expanding the landscape of Indian literature in translation.
What’s Inside the Novel
- A psychological portrait of a surgeon balancing ambition, desire, guilt, and self-deception
- A marriage strained by migration and professional pressure
- A meditation on time, ageing, and emotional erosion
- Ethical dilemmas around enhancement culture and medical power
- A public reckoning that exposes the fault lines in a seemingly successful life
Early praises for Kaayaa:
“Take a scalpel to its surface and slower, deeper questions emerge—about bodies and souls, the messy shapes love takes, and what a ‘beautiful’ life really means.”—Manu Bhattathiri, author of Savithri’s Special Room and Other Stories
“A pathbreaking novel that blends Indian and American worlds with remarkable clarity. Ultra-modern in theme and deeply human in insight, Kaayaa captures the future anxieties of the Indian middle class with an unsettling power.”—Vasudhendra, winner of the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Sahityashree Award
“Kaginele’s mastery lies in making distant America feel startlingly familiar. With his blend of medical expertise and literary precision, he constructs a world where body and mind collide in profound, provocative ways.”—M.R. Dattathri, author of What’s Your Price, Mr Shivaswamy?
“A strange, post-apocalyptic world where humans become bodies—objects to be corrected, modified, and controlled. Kaayaa is driven by a smooth, chilling violence that reveals the emotional fractures of modern life.”—B. Jeyamohan, writer & literary critic
About The Author:
A doctor by profession, Guruprasad Kaginele is a prominent voice in contemporary Kannada literature. He has published three short-story collections, three novels, and two essay collections. Additionally, he has served as the editor for two books published by the US-based Kannada Saahithya Ranga. His short stories have been translated into Telugu, Konkani, Malayalam and English. His novel Hijab (first published in 2017) received both popular and critical acclaim, including the 2017 Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award. The English translation of Hijab was published by Simon and Schuster in India in 2020, garnering both critical and commercial acclaim. Kaginele resides in Rochester, Minnesota, with his famil
