As the Book of the Month for May at Crossword, The Complex by Karan Mahajan feels like a thoughtful and timely pick.
Set in 1980s Delhi, the story begins as an intimate look at a Punjabi family but gradually opens into something much larger. It explores relationships, personal tensions, and the quiet ways in which individual choices can reflect bigger social and political shifts.
It is the kind of book that draws you in slowly and stays with you, making it a compelling read to return to this month.
The Complex
The Complex is the big, tormented Punjabi Delhi family story you didn't know you needed: a tale of bullying personalities, regretful immigrants, and people running small businesses during the last gasps of socialist India. It is a family story that sneakily turns into a heated political tale, deeply concerned with the ways reactionary thinking festers on a personal level before bursting onto the national stage.
The Road to the Book
I began researching in 2018, interviewing individuals in Delhi and browsing archives at the New York Public Library. In March 2020, I had the ignominious distinction of being the first person at Brown University to be diagnosed with COVID-19. After a mild recovery, much of the book poured out of me between April and August 2020. But that sprint proved deceptive. I spent more than three years restructuring it, and a couple more editing it.
The Process
My process is laborious but exhilarating. I write 6-7 pages daily by hand in Moleskine notebooks, stopping where I know what comes next. The following day, I type out those pages before handwriting 6-7 more. It is an intuitive process: I follow the words wherever they take me. I know the writing is working when I am surprising myself. The risk is occasionally racing off in the wrong direction, but watching characters come to life in unexpected ways makes it all worthwhile. It feels magical.
What I Love About This Book
Having spent close to 10 years on it, what I love about The Complex is that it is an idiosyncratically structured novel that holds together despite its length. At its heart, it is an intimate story about four individuals brought together and torn apart by loyalty, duty, jealousy, and romance. I hope it feels like a time capsule of Delhi in the 1980s.
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