Novel voices lives altered by the fall of the Berlin Wall
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Sheena Kalayil’s novel, The Others, tells the story of Armando, a factory worker from Mozambique, Lolita, a medical student from India, and Theo, a resident of East Berlin, as their lives intersect during and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Kalayil, who was a student in Budapest when the wall fell, later met former “madgermanes”, Mozambicans who had worked in East Germany, and felt a connection to their experiences.
She decided to write a novel focusing on the personal lives of those displaced by the political shift, rather than the political events themselves. Kalayil deliberately chose to centre a love story within the novel, believing this would allow her to give her migrant characters the emotional depth often missing in stories about migration. She also challenged expectations within the publishing industry, which often wants Indian authors to focus on stories about India or the British Raj.
The author consciously maintained her own writing style, resisting pressure to adopt a more traditionally “exotic” aesthetic. She fought to preserve the authentic voice of her characters, even in small details of dialogue, and feels confident in her approach after The Others was longlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is now working on a new novel featuring a character readers might not typically support.
