---
product_id: 327249150
title: "Legal Fiction: A Novel"
price: "3893 som"
currency: KGS
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.kg/products/327249150-legal-fiction-a-novel
store_origin: KG
region: Kyrgyzstan
---

# Legal Fiction: A Novel

**Price:** 3893 som
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Legal Fiction: A Novel
- **How much does it cost?** 3893 som with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.kg](https://www.desertcart.kg/products/327249150-legal-fiction-a-novel)

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## Description

This is like Kafka in Deoria. Or Camus in the cow belt. But more accurate to say that Legal Fiction is an urgent, literary report about how truth goes missing in our land. I read it with a racing heart.-- Amitava Kumar, author of The LoversChandan Pandey goes looking for the story that lurks just out of sight, getting under the skin of news headlines and extracting a story that is as compelling as it is devastating.-- Annie Zaidi, author of Prelude to a RiotChandan Pandey has written a brilliant, gripping political novel. Legal Fiction is a nuanced, absorbing snapshot of our times -- it captures the minefield of hate politics, the intricate almost invisible fault-lines in relationships, and the power of art in imagining a better society.-- Meena Kandasamy, author of When I Hit YouThe Hindi novel was already destined to be a marker for this era. Now this translation fills a big gap, for no work originally written in English in India has scratched the surface of what Legal Fiction approaches the cold, dark centre of. Here, in the form of a thriller and the tone of an elegy, is a sharp look at a terrifying Indian -ism and the currents against it. Be ready for a heart of darkness.-- Tanuj Solanki, author of Diwali in MuzaffarnagarLegal fiction: A rule assuming as true something that is clearly false. Often used to get around the provisions of constitutions and legal codes.A late-night phone call from his ex-girlfriend Anasuya forces writer Arjun Kumar to leave his wife and home in Delhi and travel to the mofussil town of Noma on the UP-Bihar border. The reason -- Anasuya's husband, Rafique Neel, a college professor and theatre director, has mysteriously disappeared.Soon after he arrives, Arjun realizes that things are not as they seem: the police are refusing to register a missing-persons case, Rafique's student Janaki has also disappeared, and the locals are determined to turn it into a case of 'love jihad'. And when Arjun begins to dig deeper, what he finds endangers him and everyone around him.Inspired by true events from today's India, Legal Fiction is a brilliant existential thriller and a chilling parable of our times.

Review: Makes you contemplate the situation around you! - It is a short and fast-paced read, but the depth that it explores is quite high. The idea of the story is to showcase that there are always multiple perspectives to a situation, and there are times when what we see might not be the truth. The storytelling is powerful and makes the reader pause and contemplate the theme he is exploring in the story. The emotions that Anuj feels are very real, and they are portrayed beautifully, both when he is speaking aloud and when he is thinking. I loved that the story is set in the inner mofussil town that provides a gravitas to it. The devil lies in the details, and Chandan details the plot just enough for the reader to make the connections. The book does not provide a specific ending, but the cliffhanger makes the story even more real, almost as if a life like incident unfolding.
Review: Haunting and Thrilling to the core. - Legal Fiction was one of the best reads for me last year. I reread it again this month because I was in conversation with Chandan and Bharatbhooshan and enjoyed every minute of it. Legal Fiction is unlike anything I read and kept thinking about it a lot. The themes of disappearance of a Muslim man, love jihad – a term coined by the right wing of the country to bring to task Muslim men who love Hindu women, the struggle of people in a small town who are constantly under surveillance whether they like it or not (in one way or the other), the idea of democracy just being on paper, and ultimately that of rule of land being followed over rule of law. Silences play a major role. Silences that force people to look within, to understand their spaces, look at the role of caste and religion that draw invisible boundaries, silences that reflect lack of agency of women, and how vocabulary defeats what we feel most of the time. Legal Fiction put simply is about the disappearance of a man – a man who lives in a small town with his wife and is from a minority religion in Modi’s India. It is about the agency of an urban middle-class man, Arjun, who travels to Noma – the fictional village – to locate the man, Rafique. It is about what Arjun unearths in Noma, and what goes on behind closed doors, and sometimes right in the open, only because it can. Chandan Pandey makes no bones about what he has to say. The writing is sparse, calls out the hypocrisy of the system, where things have gone wrong and continue to do so, and above all packs in a punch and more on almost every single page. Bharatbhooshan’s translation reads like the original (I also read the book in Hindi). It is fast-paced, reads like a thriller but is so much more, mesmerizing, like a sort of fever dream, and above anything else a mirror for us to see ourselves in and understand what we have become vis-à-vis what we were.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #194,427 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #63,220 in Literature & Fiction (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 3.9 out of 5 stars 55 Reviews |

## Images

![Legal Fiction: A Novel - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61b+vPr80aL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Makes you contemplate the situation around you!
*by S***L on 6 July 2021*

It is a short and fast-paced read, but the depth that it explores is quite high. The idea of the story is to showcase that there are always multiple perspectives to a situation, and there are times when what we see might not be the truth. The storytelling is powerful and makes the reader pause and contemplate the theme he is exploring in the story. The emotions that Anuj feels are very real, and they are portrayed beautifully, both when he is speaking aloud and when he is thinking. I loved that the story is set in the inner mofussil town that provides a gravitas to it. The devil lies in the details, and Chandan details the plot just enough for the reader to make the connections. The book does not provide a specific ending, but the cliffhanger makes the story even more real, almost as if a life like incident unfolding.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Haunting and Thrilling to the core.
*by V***A on 17 January 2022*

Legal Fiction was one of the best reads for me last year. I reread it again this month because I was in conversation with Chandan and Bharatbhooshan and enjoyed every minute of it. Legal Fiction is unlike anything I read and kept thinking about it a lot. The themes of disappearance of a Muslim man, love jihad – a term coined by the right wing of the country to bring to task Muslim men who love Hindu women, the struggle of people in a small town who are constantly under surveillance whether they like it or not (in one way or the other), the idea of democracy just being on paper, and ultimately that of rule of land being followed over rule of law. Silences play a major role. Silences that force people to look within, to understand their spaces, look at the role of caste and religion that draw invisible boundaries, silences that reflect lack of agency of women, and how vocabulary defeats what we feel most of the time. Legal Fiction put simply is about the disappearance of a man – a man who lives in a small town with his wife and is from a minority religion in Modi’s India. It is about the agency of an urban middle-class man, Arjun, who travels to Noma – the fictional village – to locate the man, Rafique. It is about what Arjun unearths in Noma, and what goes on behind closed doors, and sometimes right in the open, only because it can. Chandan Pandey makes no bones about what he has to say. The writing is sparse, calls out the hypocrisy of the system, where things have gone wrong and continue to do so, and above all packs in a punch and more on almost every single page. Bharatbhooshan’s translation reads like the original (I also read the book in Hindi). It is fast-paced, reads like a thriller but is so much more, mesmerizing, like a sort of fever dream, and above anything else a mirror for us to see ourselves in and understand what we have become vis-à-vis what we were.

### ⭐⭐⭐ Not a great novel as cried
*by R***N on 14 September 2021*

Just an ordinary nove of 150 pages. It does not need the hullabaloo credited in the blurbs. Not the worth of time or money.

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*Product available on Desertcart Kyrgyzstan*
*Store origin: KG*
*Last updated: 2026-05-27*