About the Book

INTO THE FOREST, AN EXQUISITELY WRITTEN, HARD-TO-DEFINE NOVEL, IS AS MUCH A MEDITATION ON THE HUMAN RELATIONSHIP TO NON-HUMAN LIFE AS IT IS A LOOK AT THE PUSH AND PULL OF GENDER, CLASS AND RACE IN OUR SOCIETIES.

‘Why do you want to know about what happened, bhai?’
The older man mentions a paper in the UK that may be interested in what happened to Nabi. Its politics are impeccable. His story will resonate there.
Nabi looks unconvinced.
‘People must know our stories,’ says the reporter.
‘Why? What good does it do?’
There are three disappearances; they could all be ‘crimes’, but only one of them ends up in murder. Germany, with its unique fractures, is the perfect setting. This story could only be about women. Yet, this is also a novel about the human condition anywhere, everywhere.
Into the Forest is about loneliness and isolation, migration and belonging. It is also about how times of great stress are both brake and accelerant to human connection.

About the Author

Avtar Singh is an author and editor. Recent fiction credits include the short story A Scandal in Punjab in The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction (2024), and The Corpse Bearer in Subnivean.org (shortlisted for the Subnivean prize 2023).
Recent non-fiction credits include work in Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, Nikkei Asian Review, India Today and Biblio.
Singh was a summer fellow at the MacDowell Colony in 2018. He was founding editor-in-chief of Time Out Delhi, and managing editor of The Indian Quarterly. His last novel, Necropolis, about crime, poetry and a woman who may be centuries-old (HarperCollins India and Akashic Press, US, 2014), was translated into German as Nekroplis. His first novel was The Beauty of These Present Things (Penguin India, 2000).
Among other print credits, his work has been collected in Mumbai Noir, Civil Lines and the essay volume Pilgrim’s India.
He has lived and worked in India, the US and China, and is now based in Germany.