Mumbai author Lindsay Pereira on the fractures of migration in his latest novel, Super

Mumbai author Lindsay Pereira on the fractures of migration in his latest novel, Super

Mumbai-based author Lindsay Pereira gravitates towards marginalised communities of society; he says, “I empathise with them more”. He graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and holds a PhD in Literature for his work on gender attitudes implicit in 19th-Century Indian fiction from the University of Mumbai.

It is the sort of academic detail that feels subtly operative in shaping a fiction that is attentive to subtext, and omission. In his latest novel, Super (published by HarperCollins India), the canvas expands.What expands with it is not just geography, but the scale of inquiry. Lindsay moves beyond the contained worlds of his earlier work into a terrain that is both widely familiar and insufficiently examined — the steady outflow of young Indians chasing the promise of stability elsewhere. The novel draws from a sharply escalating reality, one that Lindsay himself grounds in data and observation, yet it resists turning that reality into a fixed argument. Instead, it lingers on the motivations that precede departure and the quieter reckonings that follow it.

This preoccupation with lives in transition is not new in his work so much as it is extended here into a broader, more uncertain terrain. His debut novel, Gods and Ends (2021), put him on the literary map, earning shortlistings for the JCB Prize for Literature and the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award. His second, The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao, was longlisted for the 2024 Crossword Book Award and went on to win the Mumbai Literature Live! Literary Award. A collection of short fiction, Songs Our Bodies Sing, followed in 2025, continuing his interest in the often overlooked negotiations that shape everyday lives.

Lindsay Pereira | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

Super explores a phenomenon that has, in recent years, acquired both urgency and fatigue: the steady migration of young Indians to countries like Canada, propelled by a mix of financial stability and inherited aspiration. The novel follows Sukhpreet Gill, who mortgages his family land and leaves behind the woman he loves, from Jalandhar to Canada in pursuit of a better future. Running parallel to Sukhpreet’s narrative is Maynard Wilson’s story, a Canadian grappling with unemployment, mounting debt, and a resentment simmering over the shrinking opportunities in his country. When their lives intersect, the novel exposes their vulnerabilities — the one that drives people to leave their country, and the one that seeks stability at home.

Lindsay, who is also a journalist, is unusually direct about the empirical scaffolding behind the novel. “Between 2014 and 2024, for instance, there was an increase in international student enrolment, from India to Canada alone, by over 1,200%. By 2023, India contributed to the major inflow of international students in Canada, with 278,065 officially documented,” he says, adding, “I used that data to try and understand what was driving this surge, why students felt a need to get away, and what they hoped to find in a foreign country. I also read multiple reports about the impact of migration on local communities, which helped me shape these characters. The aim was to try and become a neutral observer, which I hope to have managed.”