Great Escapes
Fantasy fiction for young adults is blooming. It’s gone beyond cauldrons and spells to include gender fluidity, people of colour, differently abled princesses. Meet authors from the subcontinent creating new worlds and see how they ply their craft
Fantasy fiction for young adults is blooming. It’s gone beyond cauldrons and spells to include gender fluidity, people of colour, differently abled princesses. Meet authors from the subcontinent creating new worlds and see how they ply their craft
There are some things most works of fantasy fiction have in common — a hero, a journey, a quest, and a battle against a dark and potent force. Twenty years ago, it was young wizards and witches against Voldemort, led by Harry Potter. Then came the young vampires, werewolves and humans figuring out how to live and love, in the Twilight series, published and adapted for film from 2005 on. The world changed in this time. It was no longer enough to have good win against evil, if good was always represented by a White male. And so, in 2008, Katniss Everdeen stormed the page (and later the screen), fighting for the young ones in The Hunger Games. Young adult (YA) fantasy fiction was changing, and would change further still. Mainstream works began to make room for gender fluidity and alternative sexuality, for heroes and heroines of colour, for princesses who are ambitious, beautiful and differently abled. Some of these are books set in fictional worlds created by Indian writers. (The differently abled princess, for instance, is the heroine of Devika Rangachari’s Queen of Ice (Penguin Random House India, 2014)).
“It’s a fast-developing world. Today’s young adult is not the easiest reader to publish for. This is a woke generation that knows exactly what they want,” says Tina Narang, publisher at Harpercollins Children’s Books. “Given that we are actually living in a dystopian world, YA readers want books that connect with that too.”
This is a genre that boomed in the wake of the Potter books and films, which created an ecosystem where other writers could spin worlds of their own. Marketing blitzes meant that children around the world were clamouring for the same franchises. Today, social media and streaming platforms have intensified that sense of a global bestsellers list. But it takes more than wizards and vampires to make the cut.
In the 20 years since the first Harry Potter film was released, the world of young adult fantasy fiction has changed to mirror the real world in its plotlines too. Stories of love and adventure, friendship and largely happy endings have given way to dark tales where not everyone survives, where friends can turn enemies, and where the battles can be bloody and never-ending. “A majority of stories in this genre start out with ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” says Smit Zaveri, editor for children’s books at Penguin Random House India. “It is, in that sense, a safe space for young readers in a troubled world. It offers escape and comfort, as reading in general has always done.”
Amid the publicity and the promotion of Western authors, however, too little attention is paid to some of the remarkable young adult fantasy fiction being written here at home. Who’s creating these worlds and what do they look like? Wknd speaks to seven authors writing in English, about how they ply their craft.