A Book Review in Issue 218 of The Malahat Review by Manahil Bandukwala
“In her ‘epic fantasy in verse,‘ Bramah and the Beggar Boy (Nightwood Editions, 2021), Renée Like Ursula K. Leguin’s EarthSea Trilogy or Haruki Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, or John le Carré’s Karla Trilogy, or John Berger’s Into Their Labours, Saklikar’s vision & design & the spectrum of ‘play’ in her narrative, creates an epic landscape in the midst of which nothing is ever quite what it seems, and the reader is taken on a wild ride that is breathtaking.“
—John Lent, The Ormsby Review
“In her “epic fantasy in verse,” Bramah and the Beggar Boy (Nightwood Editions, 2021), Renée Sarojini Saklikar takes it all on with courage and gusto, with everything she has as a writer. The first book to emerge out of her life-long poem project, THOT J BAP (The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns), Bramah is a remarkable document of imagination, literary influences, and projected history.“
—Judith Penner, The Capilano Review
“An epic poem that reads like an investigative report (narratives masterfully constructed and reconstructed through multiple viewpoints) but sings from the page like an opera, replete with lyrical arias and a driving chorus. I haven’t read a work this ambitious and form-bending since Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper. Renee Sarojini Saklikar has invented a world that feels at once ancient and futuristic, shining a light on our fraught present.”
—Maria Reva, author of Good Citizens Need Not Fear
“Like James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover, or Dionne Brand’s The Blue Clerk, Renee Sarojini Saklikar’s Bramah and the Beggar Boy is intellectually, geographically, and temporally wide-ranging: ambitious, and epic in scope. This is a poet’s generous and attenuated invitation to her readers to join her in a life-long project of unlocking and unbinding, of challenging the primacy of borders, the formal, the political and the self-imposed. Her themes are serious and sweeping but she also accommodates, as do all the best subversives, moments of wry humour, and the scandalous thrills of gossip. Bramah and the Beggar Boy is a journey of rare and rewarding discovery. The portal is deep. The portal is open. Take a deep breath. Jump.”
— Bill Richardson, broadcaster and author
“Bramah and the Beggar Boy takes us into a near-future apocalyptic world on an odyssey of our time. Like Melville’s great whaling story, Saklikar’s marvellous tale rivets us with mind-blowing insights into the destructive forces at work right now in our capitalist world and how we might resist and overcome them. It’s a page-turner.”
— Meredith Quartermain, poet, novelist, and story writer
“With Bramah and the Beggar Boy, Renée Sarojini Saklikar has resurrected the epic poem for the Anthropocene, merged it with the visionary qualities of speculative fiction, and woven diasporic threads into a new and necessary act of world making. The future was such a long time ago—but maybe it’s not over yet. Throw the dice. Jump the fence. Cross the threshold. The carmen perpetuum, the continuous song of THOT J BAP has begun. Only beauty unfolds from here.”
— Stephen Collis, poet and critic
“There is a multitude of levels to this tale, told as an epic fantasy, the major theme being the ravaging effects of climate change. Bramah is a “brown, brave and beautiful” locksmith (female) who meets an orphan beggar boy. Together, through magic, her grandmother and “Four Aunties of the Wishing Well,” plus time travel, they battle the evil (known as the “Consortium”) of the planet, which has been destroyed by “surging tides … wild fires … water rights abandoned…
…will appeal to those who love deeply involved fantastical story telling, in this case in verse.”
—Anny Scoones, Times Colonist
“Renee Sarojini Saklikar’s epic journey, Bramah and the Beggar Boy, unfolds as a futuristic folklore in a long poetic form. This book is a unique read. The language draws the reader in for closer inspection, and each selected word is like an arrow shot through a bow, hitting its mark; deliberate, impactful.”
— Andrea McKenzie Raine, Goodreads Author
“An extraordinary fantasy pushing the limits of convention…Genres and style stretched to a breaking point, creating fresh tracks. I feel as I’ve entered a world where a talented disc jockey invites me into a new world. A battle for the soul of humanity ensues. Good versus evil. Everyday people, oppressed versus greed and corruption.”
— Lindsay Wincherauk, Goodreads Author
“Like a stream of consciousness during a dream, Bramah & The Beggar Boy is an enjoyable fantasy epic which travels through differing timelines, locations and generations. Inspired by masterpieces including Homer’s Odyssey, Tales of Arabian Nights and T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, the epic’s lines are puzzle pieces which when pieced together, can be read as a comprehensive, critical report on our current world.”
—Christina Park, The Ubyssey
“THOT J BAP describes torture, imprisonment, displacement and migration, detention and surveillance, raw personal and societal loss and persecution, as well as resistance and revolution. Names, titles, and references cross ethnicities and cultures and are intensely relevant: Before-Time, Rentalsman, Revival-Network, Outsider, Abigail, Bartholomew, Investigator, The Tale of the Rani of Jhansi, etc. Individuals are within multi-dimensional, pan geographic realities — what is resistance in The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns?”
—Chris Turnbull, visual artist and poet
THOT J BAP 