4. Rahul Bhattacharya, Sly Company of People Who Care (fiction)
What begins as a slow and colorful collection of impressions of Guyana from an outside accelerates into a meditation on placelessness, sex and identity. The unnamed narrator, an Indian national (distinct from East Indians, who are Guyanese, and Amerindians, who are indigenous) visits the South American country with no particular direction, knocking about from diamond-country in the rainforest to a failed passa passa-type dance in Georgetown. Vivid descriptions of Guyana’s beauty combine with a tender but honest look at an oft-ignored place to hold the reader’s attention deep into the story.