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Bikram Sharma’s debut novel, The Colony of Shadows, was longlisted for the 2023 JCB Prize for Literature. It follows Varun, a nine-year-old whose parents have died and who must adjust to a new life in Bangalore. In an interview published by Scroll.in on October 6, 2023, Sharma described the novel with the line that became its headline: “I tried to understand my own fears.” This article covers what the novel is about, how critics have read it, who it suits, and what the interview does and does not tell us.
What the novel is about
Varun is nine years old. After his parents die, he moves from Delhi to Bangalore to live with his aunt and his bedridden grandmother. Scroll’s review of the book says his parents died in a car crash, that his aunt is blind, and that the family dog is named Poppy. Those details give the domestic setting its shape: a household organised around illness and loss, in a city that is not the boy’s own.
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The story turns when Varun finds a hole in the wall of the back garden. Through it lies an abandoned, ruined colony. The place feels familiar and increasingly resembles his former home in Delhi, and a dangerous presence there threatens him. The novel’s pull comes from that doubling: a space that seems to offer his old life back, but that also carries a threat.
How the book has been read
The Scroll review, published on September 30, 2023 under the headline “The long, winding way out of death’s unique grip, and grief”, places the book within grief and magical realism. It identifies loss, memory, and the pull of an idealised past as its central preoccupations. The reviewer treats the magical-realist frame as the means by which the novel turns a child’s grief into something it can explore rather than simply describe.
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That reading is one critic’s view. Scroll’s review is the only source this article relies on for the book’s themes, and the reviewer’s emphasis on the lure of the past is an interpretation, not a statement from the author.
Who the book is for
The Scroll reviewer says the novel may suit middle-grade readers and older. This is the reviewer’s assessment, not a publisher’s age rating, and the review notes that the book deals directly with death and grief. Parents and teachers considering it for a particular child should weigh that treatment against the child’s own experience of loss.
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- Likely fit: readers around middle-grade age and older who can handle a story about bereavement and a ghostly, dreamlike setting.
- Reasons for caution: the subject matter is death and grief, and the review presents the story as emotionally direct.
- Not established: any official age classification from the publisher.
About the interview
The conversation was published by Scroll.in on October 6, 2023, with Sayari Debnath as interviewer. It was released as part of a podcast-interview series with authors and translators longlisted for the 2023 JCB Prize for Literature, and it is the third entry in that series. You can read the Scroll.in interview page for the introduction and plot synopsis.
The published page does not reproduce a transcript of the conversation. For that reason, this article does not attribute any answer or explanation to Sharma beyond the headline line quoted above. Readers looking for his account of how the novel was written, or of its autobiographical roots, will need the full audio or a complete transcript if one is published.
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Edition and availability
The Scroll review names Hachette India as the book’s publisher. The review does not give an edition, ISBN, price, or current stock status, and none of those details has been independently confirmed here. Check the publisher’s catalogue or a retailer listing for the current format and availability before buying, since a longlisted title may be reprinted, reissued, or go out of stock.
For the review itself, read the Scroll.in review of The Colony of Shadows, which contains the fuller plot details and the reviewer’s full reading of the book.
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