Brannavan Gnanalingam
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brannavan.bsky.social
Brannavan Gnanalingam
@brannavan.bsky.social
830 followers 590 following 190 posts
Novelist and occasional reviewer
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brannavan.bsky.social
Crowd at Poetry Reading Really Digging the Short Ones
December 4, 2025 at 3:13 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
RIP Peter Watkins, an underseen master (following the BBC’s half-witted panic over The War Game). He was a brilliant and provocative director
A still from Peter Watkins’ Edvard Munch
November 2, 2025 at 8:28 PM
brannavan.bsky.social
Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only
October 19, 2025 at 6:00 PM
brannavan.bsky.social
I was reminded of this today
Under the first Labour government New Zealand took an independent line in the League of Nations. For instance, when Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 the league imposed economic sanctions against Italy, but these were lifted in 1936 when Italy threatened to go to war over the matter. New Zealand opposed the lifting of sanctions and the league's decision not to challenge Italian aggression, which put New Zealand at odds with Britain's position. The government justified its stance by saying New Zealand was a sovereign country and did not always have to support Britain - Te Ara
September 27, 2025 at 4:01 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
In the shadow of this
Statue of “Turkmenbashi the Great”
September 18, 2025 at 9:21 PM
brannavan.bsky.social
And then finally a Masterclass at Tūranga (Spark Place) on a bunch of practical tips on how to fit writing in, when the rest of your life gets in the way
Is your life getting in the way of your writing? This masterclass will run through how to balance planning, research, drafting, and editing around your day-to-day life. Brannavan Gnanalingam, the author of eight novels, and full-time lawyer will share practical tips on how to balance everything.
August 25, 2025 at 9:27 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
Saturday at 12.30 at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, I’m talking about a musician that had a big impact on me, alongside Damien Wilkins, Pohlen Newbery, Claudia Jardine and Kiran Dass
Writers share a love letter to the music that moves them. Join 2025 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction winner and member of the band the Close Readers Damien Wilkins, Brannavan Gnanalingam, Pohlen Newbery (Ngai Tūhoe, Ngāti Manunui), and Claudia Jardine as they each share a band or musician that has had an indelible impact on their lives. Be introduced to new musical gems or gain fresh perspectives on old favourites. Hosted by Kiran Dass. With support from Main Divide
August 25, 2025 at 9:25 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
Then I’m talking food at Tūranga (TSB Space) with Alex Casey, Nici Wickes, and Jessica Hutchings on Friday at 6.30pm
Who would you invite to your ultimate dream dinner party? Whether it’s pop culture legends, historical figures, fictional characters, or friends and family, the possibilities are endless! Food lovers Nici Wickes, Brannavan Gnanalingam and Jessica Hutchings (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Huirapa, Gujarati) join Alex Casey to set the scene by imagining their dream guest list, and tell us what food and drink would be on their dream menu. A joyful celebration of kai.
August 25, 2025 at 9:22 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
Folks in Ōtautahi, I’m coming down for Word Christchurch and have a bunch of events that I can’t wait for. First off, I’m talking political satire, Disgrasians stinking up the discourse in our body politic, and Kartik Popat with Nic Low at Tūranga on Friday at 2.30
With his novel The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat, writer and lawyer Brannavan Gnanalingam has created a sharp satire of Wellington’s political scene and who’s actually pulling the strings. He joins Nic Low (Ngāi Tahu) for a wide-reaching conversation about political power, the changing nature of a city, thwarted artists, identity politics and democratic principles.
August 25, 2025 at 9:20 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
Why not (though ask me tomorrow and I’ll have a different list)
To Her Door - Paul Kelly Mr Somewhere - The Apartments The World’s a Girl - Anita Lane Wide Open Road - The Triffids Cattle and Cane - The Go-Betweens Since I Left You - The Avalanches I Touch Myself - Divinyls Under the Milky Way - The Church Fruits of Labour - Party Dozen Can’t Get You out of My Head - Kylie
July 3, 2025 at 2:11 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
Describe your favourite movie in the most misleading way possible.

Ooh la la, a French ménage-à-trois
La Maman et la Putain by Jean Eustache
June 11, 2025 at 8:54 PM
brannavan.bsky.social
Vladimir, nooo
Victoria Ratliff, White Lotus
April 24, 2025 at 6:46 PM
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Once again, Kartik Popat doing his best to nab a column, given this week’s ugly political machinations
I now had to diversify my output and shift away from Covid, applying a certain amnesia that also harnessed the angst. I started with easy targets, and I’d say things like how immigrants came over here and worked hard and didn’t blame colonisation in their home countries to get on with things here, and how we didn’t need to focus on grievance politics anymore, and how it was unfair that so much spending was going towards Māori, or I’d double-down on attacks on the trans community, because I’d come to realise that there was a whole zombie horde out in the UK, a privileged generation of middle-class white women, desperate for victim status in spite of their economic power built on the back of the work done by the second-wavers, were blaming trans people allegedly lurking everywhere to ensure that they could continue to claim that they were just as much victims as other minorities, or otherwise I’d amplify accounts of white men who were being mocked or teased or losing their jobs and careers thanks to leftists (though the latter didn’t really happen, we just needed people to think that it could happen, and we’d underplay the criminal convictions of those who were actually fired), as I had come to realise that people were desperate to be seen as the unfairly treated ones
April 22, 2025 at 8:00 AM
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Oh! A fantastic review of Kartik Popat by Cybonn Ang in the new Takahē (and plenty of great stuff in the latest edition, as always)
Gnanalingam lifts us from the stratospheric frivolity of Kartik’s early ambitions and lands us smoothly onto the concrete tarmac of 2020 where we witness his disintegration through a series of events which are perhaps still painful for the collective Kiwi psyche to relive. The isolation. The breakdown of law and order. The fraying of bonds. The shattering of trust. And finally, the encounter with truth. It is brave for the author to choose a main character who is emphatically not ‘model minority’ material, who is spurned by his own South Asian community, who is The Other’s Other, and to use him to hold up a mirror to Aotearoa New Zealand society. Perhaps there’s an archetypal function to this persona. Perhaps Gnanalingam knows that it is only by presenting the truth through this hyena, that we might be able to face our own most secret appetites.
April 6, 2025 at 7:13 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
Give Kartik Popat a column in the Herald
I did consider voting Green… and in hindsight, I probably should have, because it would have assisted my narrative going forward - “former disillusioned Green voter” sounded better, I must admit, than the sensible Khandallah Kaiser and pugilistic Perky-nana, and yes, I told Joe that I voted Green, and yes, I’ve since told people that I voted Green in 2005 because I’d gone too far with my lie.”
April 4, 2025 at 6:49 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
Hook this review of Kartik Popat in the Aotearoa NZ Review of Books from @tzemingdynasty.bsky.social to my veins www.nzreviewofbooks.com/the-life-and...
Gnanalingam’s instantly iconic and deceptively clever thought-experiment The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat, connects endstate far-right disinfo Disgrasians with our classic Asian diaspora starting point of ‘what if I was a loser with no friends?’ The novel is funny in a way that a car crash is funny, depending on who is locked inside it, whether they die or not, and who they might have tried to blow up. As both satire and great horror should be, it’s effective because it’s too real. The extreme levels of cringe cause you to leave your body at times, not least during the excruciating sex scenes. The internalised racism is matter-of-fact and constant. ‘Befriending my fellow Indians would seem like I’d failed,’ says Popat. With enough sunblock, he hopes ‘there was a chance that people would mistake me for a far more desirable Brazilian or Southern Italian’. Like Gnanalingam’s last novel, Slow Down You’re Here (2022), this is an Asian horror story, with Popat the ghostly, ghastly threat of our own self-hatred, that other guy within who we know will only destroy us. Perhaps it’s a flaw not to extend the grace of understanding to an unreliable narrator through complex characterisation in a contemporary novel – but there is understanding. We understand him really well. We are from there! Gnanalingam has already won literary recognition for more humanist empathetic novels, and now he has allowed us our sealed moment of recognition, disgust, horror, rejection and – if we are lucky, if we are in the mood – laughter.
April 3, 2025 at 5:50 PM
brannavan.bsky.social
I wasn’t convinced my Indian nationalist income stream was sturdy, and I’d neglected some of their messaging with my pill work, because I was making legitimate money, so I hadn’t noticed that a couple had stopped paying, and their “please explain” emails had slipped to my spam folders, and one hadn’t taken too kindly to the fact I accidentally promoted the Farmers’ Protests (look, I didn’t know what they were about).
March 18, 2025 at 6:38 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
I did throw in a joke about KP tank tops in the book in, er, an homage (?) to Patel’s tank top grift
Kash Patel tank tops
February 22, 2025 at 6:01 AM
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Potentially relevant
Excerpt from Kartik Popat
February 8, 2025 at 3:18 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
Lol thespinoff.co.nz/books/02-11-...
Ramaswamy is already being cut by Musk and having a tilt at the Ohio governorship
January 20, 2025 at 6:21 PM
brannavan.bsky.social
From Angelique Kasmara in Kete Books’ piece on reviewers’ favourite books of the year www.ketebooks.co.nz/en/reading-l...
Gnanalingam pulls us under the skin of a character that is at once loathsome, hilarious and wholly realised. It’s a book for this age: a timely, incendiary, and chilling glimpse into representational politics, echo chambers and how the algorithm machine has forever changed modern democracy
December 11, 2024 at 5:12 PM
brannavan.bsky.social
I swear I was just taking the piss in Kartik Popat when I wrote that an MP character was given the ceremonial role of Minister for Railways to keep him occupied (despite there already being an SOE Minister and a Minister for Transport)
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has agreed to give Winston Peters a new role and will give him ministerial responsibility for rail
December 10, 2024 at 6:40 AM
brannavan.bsky.social
Pretty amazing day, tbh, and proud as a tauiwi to march in support of Te Tiriti
Hīkoi forming at Waitangi Park Hīkoi about to move Hīkoi on Courtenay Place
November 19, 2024 at 7:08 AM
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This was the corner of Taranaki and Courtenay, near to when the front of the hikoi was reaching Parliament
November 18, 2024 at 11:58 PM
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😉
November 12, 2024 at 7:11 PM