Mapping the Forbidden Kingdom: Deepa Anappara on Tibet, Empire, and The Last of Earth

Deepa Anappara is the critically acclaimed author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, a debut novel named one of the best of 2020 by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, The Guardian and NPR. Anappara is the winner of the 2021 Edgar Award for and shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature. She is a former journalist in India reporting on poverty, education and religious violence. Her fiction isgrounded in empathy and detail.

In this episode of TOI Bookmark, Anappara discusses hersecond novel The Last of Earth, published by Penguin Random House India, a historical novel set in nineteenth-century Tibet that follows the journey of an Indian schoolteacher spying for the British Empire and an English “lady” explorer.