In today’s age of AI-driven hyper-digitalisation, the reader increasingly seems like an endangered species. Nobody writes about readers and nobody reads about readers. Our world seems to be systematically pushing out the reading of literature from mainstream conversation. In such a bleak reality comes the poet Udayan Vajpeyi’s debut novel Love is Participation in Eternity, which puts the reader at the centre of our mental maps. It is a story of two readers, written for the readers by a reader.

All great writers have tirelessly repeated this sacred dictum: Every writer is first a reader. But we are in 2026. The new generation of writers is struggling – the issues of screen time, doom scrolling, brain fog, lack of concentration and attention fragmentation have proven to be serious obstacles to reading and writing. Whenever we speak or write about books, I sense a dilution of our critical faculties. As if, what my beloved poet Mary Oliver termed the “bird of thought”, has flown away, leaving us all in a dense digital haze.

Therefore, it was a delight to come across a novel which, among other things, does not just celebrate the act of reading but also portrays literature as a relevant participant, even contributor in the...

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