A saga of 20th Century EGYPT
A novel of sexual politics and more set in LONDON
29th July 2026
Fieldwork As A Sex Object by Meena Kandasamy, a novel of sexual politics and more set in LONDON.
“Everybody’s digital footprint is a crime scene awaiting discovery”. That’s a scary thought!
Images of Amrita (Amy) Chaturvedi (“young & left-wing & out of India“) have gone viral. A deepfake of her face is plastered onto the naked body of a woman having sex. It is everywhere. She now has to work on damage limitation, with her best friend Nimmi helping to navigate this powerful and potentially annihilating intrusion into her life. And try and discover the identity of the person behind the abhorrent videos.
There is plenty of dialogue with her family back in the Delhi Defence Colony, her mother in particular has her own views, and mum sets the tone of the relationship with her daughter by always being the first to hang up on the phone. The inclusion of family dynamics in India adds an interesting element, given the conservative nature of Indian society when confronted by the terrible situation at this level. A “tamasha” is acknowledged to be erupting over there (a show, drama, spectacle – a loanword from Persian and Arabic) with Amy at its heart.
Amy holds all kinds of strong views, which she is keen to share. Her view on India: “India is all brown people and third world but it operates like Ghislaine Maxwell is running the show”. Nooooo, why would you use this venal woman to demonstrate a point, it’s not even shocking, it’s just cheap shorthand to express something horrible. Having said that, the author does have some pertinent, if rather predictable observations about India the country and India the do-gooder white crusader, whom she encounters in London, and who then takes Amy in when when things are escalating.
The author pontificates about women writers and how sexual politics dominate, not only in their world but ubiquitously; and those female authors who do survive when the odds are stacked against them “wear the tortured look of inmates in a concentration camp“. Another unfortunate and disrespectful comparison, what is going on in this novel?
The author is styled as a poet and provocateur. She breezes through the story, sliding all kinds of issues she wants to flag whilst coolly analysing the components and people involved. The story does have real energy. She has Amy having a to-and-fro about fascism with her ex lover “The Old White Prof”, and now he is briefly back in her orbit because of the unfolding drama surrounding her. It’s not a particularly edifying exchange but offers some insight into Amy’s modus operandi and beliefs. She has some fondness towards him but it is a struggle to understand why.
Amy is a Brahmin, with “spunk and courage“, who is not afraid to share her views. She has backbone and resilience, but all-in-all the story can feel chaotic as it butterflies through this dramatic period of her life. The prolific use of swear words leaves the reader in no doubt that she gives as good as she gets – this doesn’t usually bother me but here it became a stylistic imperative that loses its punch along the way and becomes tedious.
Amy almost feels like a sassy but slightly tawdry reincarnated figure from Indian mythology, who cleaves her way through life, wielding a sword (or some such implement). It is a novel of today and I fully understand I am not the demographic at which it is aimed. Nikesh Shukla says on the cover, this work is a “tour de force“, but for me not in a particularly good way, it rams things home, it shouts at the reader about patriarchy and incel culture and sexual politics and #metoo and the internet and the plight of women in India… all through Amy’s lens, as her story unfolds. To be fair, it does end on quite a thought-provoking note.
In the Afterword, the author highlights how multiple publishers rejected this book for a variety of reasons, to wit its scoffing style, excessive sharing etc., and she then suggests the publishers’ representatives who didn’t take the book on are “..repressed prudes who can’t handle all the sex“, which is a brave interpretation of the rejection and shows terrific self-belief. The sex, to be honest, isn’t that raunchy and there are plenty of novels out there that would distinctly turn heads much more than this – the rejections are probably more to do with the central character’s lack of development and the fractured storyline. I do, though, admire the author’s confidence in her own work. She acknowledges that this is “...not a book that you read. This book is reading you” – whatever that means.
in 2018 the author was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for her novel: When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
Setting isn’t particularly strong.
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