The Nowhere Man by Kamala Markandaya review – worryingly relevant

When the African American artist Faith Ringgold’s brilliantly provocative American People Series paintings were rediscovered a few years ago, after being hidden away in storage since the 1960s because of art world uninterest, she found herself belatedly proclaimed a major artistic figure. At 88, she had to wait 60 years for society to catch up with her radical black female genius. Zora Neale Hurston was sadly long dead when her womanist novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) was resurrected in the 70s by Alice Walker, after decades out of print. It has been considered a feminist classic ever since. One wonders how many other great works of art, especially from marginalised voices, are underrated or ignored because they were ahead of their time.

The republication of The Nowhere Man (1972) by Kamala Markandaya, who migrated to Britain from India in 1948, is a case in point. It was her seventh novel, but unlike her previous, India-based books, this one put British racism under the microscope, gained no traction with the critics and disappeared from sight until now. Set in 1968, the year of Enoch Powell’s racist rivers of blood speech, the novel centres on Srinivas, an Indian widower and spice merchant who came to England in 1919 and now lives in his own large house in a London suburb. He has experienced the loss of his country and many loved ones. When his Indian wife dies, he becomes friends, and eventually lovers, with Mrs Pickering, a kindly English divorcee.

Srinivas ruminates on his relationship to Britain in a novel that bravely unpicks the scabs of empire and racism. He experienced the oppressiveness of the British empire in India in his youth and he’s never quite sure, even after 50 years, whether he fully belongs in his adopted country. He’s generally left undisturbed, but with the arrival of black and Asian immigrants in the 50s and 60s, racist attitudes surface with dire consequences. When immigrants are accused of being the root of all the country’s problems, Srinivas, referring to the exploitative history of the empire, concludes that the reverse is true: “That this bland country owed debts it had not paid, rather than scores which it had to settle. That the past had seen his countrymen sinned against, rather than sinning.”

Markandaya’s writing initially feels ponderous, almost archaic, and the 21st-century reader probably needs to acclimatise until the book grabs hold and doesn’t let go. She weaves the reality of racial politics as a lived experience, as well as themes of community, conquest, belonging and love. Character interiority and complexity are exploited to the full, fostering empathy, even when people should be despised. She dexterously handles subtly shifting points of view so that we are exposed to multiple perspectives. Cultures clash, generations are divided by gaps, there are private and political rebellions, families are ripped apart, much goodness prevails, but when immigrants are made scapegoats, innocent people suffer.

The Nowhere Man is worryingly topical in our unsettled times with hate crimes on the rise and anti-foreign sentiment stoked by the Brexit agenda. Unfortunately, Markandaya died in 2004 and isn’t around to witness renewed interest in the book she considered her greatest. For the last 20 years of her life, she couldn’t get published and went out of print. Generations of readers lost out on reading this gem. Now I hope it will take its rightful place in literary history.

Bernardine Evaristo’s novel Girl, Woman, Other (Hamish Hamilton) has been longlisted for the 2019 Booker prize.