Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

Constant flow of misfortune, trauma, pain. I ended up listening to the audiobook on a long road trip, otherwise I'm not sure I would've gotten through the first quarter.

I found the writing a bit uneven in places. There's a good, meaty story here, for sure. The craft left me struggling. That's a personal thing, most likely. I'm sure the book will find a wide, loving readership.

Contemporary Western society romanticizes the idea of running away to join the circus — abandoning life’s responsibilities for a whimsical life on the road. But the reality of traveling performers has historically been born out of necessity and survival. In Shastri Akella’s debut novel “The Sea Elephants” (out now), a young man in 1990s India joins a street theater troupe as a means of physical safety but ends up on a journey of self-actualization and healing intergenerational trauma.

The title of the novel comes from the Hindu tale of the sea elephants, the favorite story of protagonist Shagun and his younger twin sisters, Mud and Milk. The myth’s first appearance in the novel goes:

“The gods took away the first ancestor of the sea elephants, coveting him for his exceptional beauty — tusks blue, body ivory. The trauma of that original separation haunts every sea elephant thereafter … Only the soul of a drowned child makes their suffering manageable.”

As Shagun grieves the untimely deaths of his sisters, he carries the story of the sea elephants from his hometown along the Bay of Bengal to boarding school, a traveling theater troupe and a teaching position in Chamba. Each time the myth appears on the page, the story changes to reflect Shagun’s evolving understanding of his sexuality, his relationships with his parents and his trauma. “The Sea Elephants” is an emotional coming-of-age story spanning eight years as Shagun becomes a confident actor, falls in love with a Jewish man and reclaims the myths that once sought to exclude queer narratives.
Navigating grief and identity through storytelling

When Mud and Milk tragically drown, their father, Pita-jee, returns to India for the first time in Shagun’s memory. Indignation ignites within Shagun towards his father. The man who never met and doesn’t appear to grieve his daughters suddenly has a lot of demands for how his 16-year-old son should be performing masculinity. Shagun’s only source of solace is “The Dravidian Book of Seas and Stargazing,” the book of Hindu myths his mother, whom he calls Ma, read to him, Mud and Milk growing up. The stories of the gods help Shagun keep the twins’ memory alive while offering escapism from his now-tumultuous home life.

To evade the notion that Pita-jee’s absence caused Shagun to exhibit feminine qualities and the threat of an early roka (the pre-engagement phase of Punjabi arranged marriages) to a gender he knows he’ll never be attracted to, Shagun applies to boarding school. But his classmates are even more cruel than his father, so Shagun seeks escape once again. This time, he finds it in the form of a street theater performance during the local Ram Navami celebration. The actors invoke the stories of the gods in a way that nourishes Shagun’s love of the epics, reminds him of his sisters and Ma and sparks the possibility of a life where his gay identity is embraced, not scorned.

This heart-wrenching story of a teenager unable to process his grief turns into a frantic extrication when Shagun learns Pita-jee plans to force him into conversion therapy. The novel reflects how homosexuality was punishable by a ten-year prison sentence in India until 2018. Because a nomadic lifestyle would make it difficult for his father or the authorities to locate him, Shagun’s dream of joining the theater troupe becomes a necessity. Despite the threats that never stray far from Shagun’s mind, becoming an actor and forging friendships with his troupe members brings Shagun hope and joy.

“The Sea Elephants” portrays the affirming power of queer found-families. While Shagun is at odds with his parents, he first finds unconditional support from the acting troupe and, later, from his boyfriend Marc and new friends.

The fluidity of performance and the performance of gender

Author Akella expertly incorporates the stories of Hindu deities to illustrate the values of the characters and 1990s Indian society at large. At the beginning of the novel, Akella cleverly contrasts Ma’s favorite deity Krishna, the god of love and compassion, with Pita-jee’s favorite deity, the masculine and athletic Hanuman. Shagun’s parents present a united front in their decisions about his future, and he can’t reconcile why his loving mother who raised him would side with his harsh and absent father. Throughout the book, his love of Hindu mythology is at odds with some of the stories that demonize queer people and minimize women.

Acting allows Shagun to interpret the gods for himself. He says, “Male-female, young-old, god-demon, human-animal: I swam across binaries like a fish moving from one river to another at the point of confluence.” His friends in the theater troupe teach Shagun that to be an actor is to be fluid. And over the course of the novel, Shagun learns that some Hindu myths have been altered over time to censor the original Sanskrit writing that portrayed fluid gender identities and sexualities in a positive light. One powerful example is Krishna’s teachings in the scripture Bhagavad Gita, where he says the body is an earthly suit and souls have no gender. Shagun wonders why the gender of his soulmate should matter if his own soul is without gender.

Another strength of the novel is how Akella draws parallels between Marc’s family history alongside Shagun’s personal experiences. Both sets of Marc’s Jewish grandparents fled Austria when the first Nazi concentration camp was erected in 1933, “leaving behind their belongings, their homes, their histories,” Marc says. Like Shagun’s departure, “It wasn’t so much the right decision as the inevitable one.” Shagun learns that Jewish people have migrated to India for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the wake of religious persecution and forced conversion. Like the Judeo-Malayalam language (a blend of Hebrew and the local language), Shagun and Marc’s relationship feels like a thematic nod to the coexistence of their respective cultures blending into one. By fighting for their own joy, they are slowly healing their own traumas and the traumas of the family that came before them

The emotional truth of fiction

Akella was born in India and worked for Google before receiving his MFA in creative writing and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. To inform his writing of “The Sea Elephants,” Akella shadowed a theater troupe across India, interviewed men who endured conversion therapy centers and drew from his personal experiences in cultivating queer community, joy and resistance.

As a reader, I felt those lived experiences imbued in this novel. The magic of theater is a visceral experience that sparkles on the page. The anguish of a family who doesn’t accept their child’s identity is soothed by the balm of friends who do. The horrors of homophobia are displayed alongside resplendent queer joy. The acceptance of individual identity without needing to divorce cultural identity is a drumbeat that begs to be heard. “The Sea Elephants” takes the reader on a journey from coast to coast and hits every note of the human emotional spectrum along the way.

3.5 stars.

This ended up being such a unique reading experience and I'm really glad I picked it up. I don't think I've ever read a story from a queer Indian perspective and it was both fascinating and incredibly sad. There was so much trauma and assault that it made it very difficult to carry on at times. The main character, Shagun, reminded me of a slightly less tragic version of Jude from A Little Life. No spoilers, but I also felt very conflicted with the idea of forgiving a loved one who has assaulted you.

Thank you to Netgalley and Flatiron Books for an advance copy!

I am a sucker for coming of age novels set in India! Not only learn of the connection between father and son you learn the traditions of India.

What a refreshing take on the LGBTQ+ novel, bringing a not-often-explored culture and religion into these types of novels. This one will stay with me for a long time to come!

In another timeline, I think this book might have become my "A Little Life"

Not only is it earnest and bold - it succeeds at striking a balance between Meaning Something and prentention in a way that few authors manage. Akella has a gift for finding the beauty in banality and describing utter horrors with a detatchment that make them all the more unsettling. In anyone, this would make for an artist. For a debut, it shows a unique talent that promises to grow in ways I can't wait to witness.

Exceedingly curious, this book is many things. Not only is it a queer coming of age in India - it's a maze of unpacking caste dynamics, defining and redefining masculinity, the psychological impacts of self loathing, the hope and fear of starting over, the constant navigation of familial relationships, and the freedom that comes with letting life be messy.

In other hands, this extended coming of age might have quickly become tedious. Yeah, you're traumatized, by the end of the book you'll get over it becuase you know the power of love, blah blah blah. It's a plot that isn't new and isn't going anywhere, but Akella knows it's not that simple. We go down paths we don't want to for the simple reason that we can't stop ourselves and we can't see another way forward. Our worst fears are realized and we realize that we don't like who we're forced to become when we don't have other options. We're pushed into boxes we don't ask for and hate ourselevs for thinking it might be easier to let them me than to push against them. We blame ourselves for things that maybe aren't our fault but maybe are. We want to change and try to change and beat ourselves up when we can't which makes change even harder to achieve. Love doesn't fix us. But we can sit with it, and if we've found the right person, they'll sit with us.

Shastri Akella's "The Sea Elephants" follows a young man named Shagun during his most pivotal development years. We see his rocky relationship with his absent father, grief after his twin sisters tragically pass away, Shagun grappling with his sexuality both mentally and physically, and finding romantic and platonic true love. The novel is set in India in the late 1980s to 1990s, and Akella does a fantastic job of incorporating Indian mythology, culture, and sociopolitical issues into this very personal novel.

What I enjoyed most about "The Sea Elephants" were the relationships that Shagun found for himself. His fellow actors were entertaining and had Shagun's back no matter the circumstances. Marc, mostly, was a swoon-worthy love interest, and his warmhearted friends adopted Shagun so easily. Typical of Indian culture, Shagun's father tries to arrange for him to marry a young woman. Luckily for both of them, neither actually plan on marrying the other and from there another lovely friendship is made.

Parts of "The Sea Elephants", especially in the middle, were a bit of a drag; so much so that I often didn't feel motivated to pick it up. For a novel of this length, it took me longer than usual to read. However, this is not a book intended to be devoured at a rapid pace. It reads best when you take your time and take in the mythical stories and atmosphere.

From what I can find, Akella was born in a small Indian town but eventually immigrated to the United States. "The Sea Elephants" is not a translated work, but at times it feels as though it is. I particularly had an issue with the characters' dialogue throughout. I either found some conversations to feel not entirely natural or simply just confusing. At one point towards the end I had to reread a conversation three times to decipher who said what and also why - their remarks seemed out of left field. Of course, I may have a different opinion of the final published work, but for now the dialogue was the weak link in an otherwise beautifully written novel.

I believe "The Sea Elephants" has the makings of becoming an important novel in the LGBTQIA+ literary canon. I haven't heard any buzz surrounding it, and at the time of writing this review it publishes in just over a week. I would confidently give this book my recommendation.

The Sea Elephants (publication date July 11, 2023) by Shastri Akella is the book about grief, queerness, Hindu mythology, and street theatre that I had no idea that I needed. It's beautifully written, and though it's not a short book, I wished that I could stay immersed in Shagun's world longer.

As the book opens in the late 1980s, teenager Shagun is meeting his father for the first time that he remembers, six months after his twin younger sisters died in the ocean and he believes he is to blame for their death. He is angry with his father for leaving, and for coming home, and just for being. Plus, his father has figured out something about Shagun that never seemed to be a problem when it was just his mother, sisters, and him. Shagun is aware of his feelings for other boys, but his father is determined to make Shagun into a man. So Shagun decides to apply for a scholarship for a boarding school to get away.

But boarding school isn't that great, either, as all of the boys can see who he is despite his attempts to fit in, and he is the victim of assault. He is an excellent student, though, and a teacher suggests that he go to see a performance of Hindu myths by a street troupe. Shagun falls in love with the idea of acting, as he and his sisters had performed the myths their mother read for them in the treehouse that was theirs alone. It's a way he can be closer to them since they're gone. He loves the idea of becoming the gods and goddesses and telling the myths in the present tense.

When a man in charge of a "male fixing center" comes to see him at school at his father's request, and Shagun is to report there at the end of the term, Shagun knows that he has to join the street performing troupe so they will never find him. And so Shagun travels India performing in a different place every few days, until they stop years later to teach the performing arts at a school. There he meets the love of his life, Marc, an American Jewish man who emigrated to southern India as a child to live near a centuries-old Jewish settlement.

Even though years have passed since Shagun was a teenager, and it is the 1990s, it is still difficult to be gay in India, with police harassment, the male fixing centers still seeking men to convert, and parents arranging marriages. After his father dies in a construction accident in England, and his mother goes to live in a widow's convent, Shagun finds family in those around him. He finally finds the courage to be himself with the man that he loves, and to forgive himself for whatever role he may have played in the accidental deaths of his sisters.

It's a beautiful book, and now I want to visit India to see street theatre and smell strings of jasmine flowers.

The Sea Elephants is weight-neutral, as there were no descriptions of fatness or fat people that I recall. However, part of the early storyline involved Shagun's somewhat enlarged chest compared to many boys or men, but I didn't see that as a description of him being fat. But I could see these descriptions as being difficult for some, so fair warning.

definitely a riveting debut, i love how Shagun's phases in his life all contribute to his development, and the troupe of course!!! so memorable

They had me at "traveling theater troupe"! But that's not the only memorable and lovely feature of this book. Shagun's story is a difficult one at several points, involving abuse, homophobia, grief, and conversion therapy. But in each of those dark places, Shagun finds something—more often someone—to hold on to, that gives meaning and even joy to his life. That's what really saved this story for me and kept it from ever feeling too depressing. His lifelines were many and beautiful—and mythically magical, in the case of the theater troupe and their costumes, makeup, and performances. I do not know a lot about India or about Hindu mythology, but this book gave me a warm welcome to all of it, immersing me in the scents, colors, tastes, and textures from the start. (If you can read this whole thing without craving a cup of chai, you're a stronger person than I.)

As many queer novels do, this book deals with the themes of how cultures and families shape and imprison some of their members (sometimes literally), and how to find a way free of those shackles. But it does so in a fully unique and complex way that I think I will remember for a long time. Recommended!

I enjoyed this book, but it has some tough pages, Trigger warnings include bullying, rape, child death, conversion therapy. It also has joy in found family, finding love and acceptance. I will look for other books by Shastri Akella. Difficult to describe, so check it out for yourself.