Earthly Playing Field

A speculative novel of anti-imperialist queer imagination set in a science-fictional future that is rooted in the lovingly-portrayed context of the Punjabi global diaspora. Love and revolution in a crumbling world order . . . Roma has a full-time job, a mortgage, and a loving family in Queens. Life is good in the center of the Empire, but on the outskirts, soldiers wage a brutal war against a besieged people. When her stepbrother Ranbir entrusts her with a mysterious plant, Roma discovers it's a startlingly sophisticated piece of bioengineered technology that opens a portal for an extra-terrestrial spirit body that brings news of a liberated future. While Ranbir joins forces with the spirit body to confront the nucleus of automated warfare, his brother Khushbir has more local concerns, and is organizing the Punjabi farmers' protest. Meanwhile, Roma is occupied with existential questions about complicity and faith that have her reconsidering her role within this global struggle. What follows draws Roma and her family onto the frontlines of the resistance - and in Roma's case, into the path of a woman whose heart will only ever belong to the revolution.