Vaishnavi Patel does it again! What an astounding piece of work! This more than holds up to her debut novel “Kaikeyi,” which I loved for its emotional complexity and rich detail. Ten Incarnations packs an even stronger punch: I can tell that Ms. Patel poured her heart into this novel, and that it comes from a place of deep personal meaning.

Set in a fictional India that never secured its independence from Imperial Britain, this story follows Kalki, a young woman who becomes the leader of a rebel group. In the memory of her father, she tries to bring to life a freedom she has neither seen nor knows the cost of.

Overarchingly, the story is about revolution, which feels like a dominant theme in fiction right now. I was strongly reminded of R.F. Kuang’s novel “Babel,” which similarly reimagines an exploitative Imperial Britain, but with fantastical flavor. Both books grapple with a difficult question: can a revolution succeed without violence?

One immediately wants to respond in the affirmative, because haven’t we seen examples of it in history? I myself came from a country known for ending a tyrannical dictatorship through a “nonviolent” popular demonstration (see 1986 Philippine People’s Power Revolution). But I know from quiet stories passed down within my family that it was far from peaceful. My mother’s college friends “disappeared” one day and never came home. Sometimes, bodies would be found in odd places, practically unidentifiable. Underneath the hundreds of thousands of protesting feet marching on the capital that week, there was plenty of spilled blood from the early dissenters who lit the beacons and got gunned down for doing so. They were the ones who paved the way and made a “nonviolent” revolution possible.

The one thing that isn’t in question here is that effective revolutions demand sacrifice. Those who fight for the cause typically won’t benefit from their own success. Revolutions are for the people, yes, but they are also born from audacious ideas - for example, freedom - and such ideas always exact a heavy human cost. Is it better, then, to have no “liabilities” when engaging in such dangerous activities? Yet another question that gets explored at length as Kalki watches her friends build lives around her while she devotes herself entirely to her work. One of the most satisfying parts of this novel is watching her grow into the realization that she cannot sever all those connections if she wants to survive: her “liabilities” are her friends, her found family, her best allies, and indeed her reason to continue the fight.

A quote from David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” comes to mind:

“Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

Perhaps we are asking the wrong question, then. Perhaps it is not if but when. When is violence appropriate? How much? That’s a cold-blooded calculation that can easily go off the rails, and something that makes me uncomfortable as an ethicist. It’s easy to speak about doing harm to someone, but quite another thing to actually do the harm. In Ms. Patel’s words, “Was that balance, justice? Or was it just chasing pain with pain in an endless night?”

It’s these big, difficult, salient questions that ultimately make me love this book enough to give it full stars. Revolution makes sense as a dominant theme in fiction in light of what we’re collectively dealing with in different parts of the world. So as I recommend this to you all, I won’t pretend that the material is easy, but it’s very thought-provoking and should serve as a sober, well-considered call to action. There are many injustices in this world of ours - “we’re all suffering a million griefs” - but change demands patience, perseverance, and belief. We, who are ever impatient and distrusting of each other and our institutions, should do well to remember.

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts as I let this story percolate in my head. Soon enough, the immigrant’s guilt will rear its ugly head, as it always does when I read stories that make me think of my own halfway-abandoned roots. But to feel that is the whole point of books like this, which is transgressive on all accounts: it challenges our notions of normalcy, gender norms, religious lines, class and caste, conceptions of race, indeed even our understanding of our collective history. The point of a revolution is to overthrow the norms: even the ones that serve us.

Thank you, Ms. Patel, for this gorgeous gem. I appreciate the deep research and scholarship that went into this novel (adding some of those cited works to my tbr right now). And thank you for not shying away from the truly difficult conversations we need to have, and for showing us that indeed, books are political. I’ll be rereading this one for years to come.

(Promotional reel also posted on IG, full review on IG to follow.)

History sometimes feels like a turn of events through a kaleidoscope, if the tool was turned just slightly to an alternate direction, things would look so different In Ten Incarnations of Rebellion, the kaleidoscope turns back from when the British marched out through the Gateway of India and presents a country in a totally disparate light, a country under imperial rule, with the spirit of revolution and rebellion. The book is divided through ten primary avatars of Vishnu, the Hindu god. Each chapter unveils a lesson of that avatar as it chronicles the story of the protagonist, Kalki, a revolutionary in this alternate India's capital, Kingston (in the city currently known as Mumbai). The decade of Kalki's life that we follow, set in the 1960's, is an era that has its own associations with resistance and protests in our timeline, but also distanced enough from the era of Mahatma Gandhi and his contemporaries to function as a shared history on which to pivot. The story works on two levels. First, as an alternate history, if the British had not exited India in the 1940's. And, secondly, as a deeply moving story of a young woman as she experiences friendships, love, and loss. It is a touching story of deep, raw, honest emotion. This is the type of historical fiction I most enjoy, a story that I could connect with and recommend to anyone.
I received advanced digital access to this book thru NetGalley (for which I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Books) for an honest review. The opinion expressed here is my own.

This was an interesting read. I have read and watched other things about the fight for Indian Independence. This book does a good job of incorporating the historical period with a fictional narrative.

This book was devastating, hopeful, tender, and so beautifully written. I was unable to put it down after 40% and ate the last 60 in one bite, crying throughout with tears both mournful and filled with inspiration. This book is brilliant, and I'm both stunned and thrilled that Vaishnavi managed to unseat Kaikeyi as my favorite.

"Ten Incarnations of Rebellion" turned out to be a fantastic mix of alternative-history, colonial resistance, and deep friendship, topped off with a dash of Hindu mythology to tie the narrative together. I was able to enjoy this within a span of just a few days.