A monk kneels on the ground, sprinkling colored sand into an intricate mandala. It takes weeks to complete. When it is finished, it is deliberately destroyed. The gesture is not an act of loss, but of clarity. Nothing is meant to last.
That image sits quietly at the heart of The Last of Earth, Deepa Anappara’s new historical novel, and it stands in stark opposition to the imperial obsession that animates the book. In the 19th century, as the British Empire expanded across South Asia, maps became instruments of power. When Tibet closed its borders to Europeans, the British trained Indian men to cross its high passes in disguise. They were trained to counte their steps andmeasure altitude with their bodies, all in an effort to smuggle knowledge back to an empire determined to turn landscape into possession. Their labor was essential. But their names were erased.
Anappara is not new to writing from the vantage point of those made vulnerable by systems that insist on their own innocence. Her debut, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, followed a child narrator searching for missing children in an Indian slum, a novel celebrated for its voice and recognised with major honours including the Edgar Award for Best Novel.
She came across these stories years after leaving India for the UK, at a moment when she was beginning to reckon with race, migration, and the selective amnesia of British colonial memory. What began as historical research grew into a polyphonic novel that turns the adventure narrative inside out.
The Last of Earth unfolds through two perspectives: an Indian surveyor-spy guiding a British officer into Tibet, and a middle-aged English woman determined to reach Lhasa herself, her ambition constrained and sharpened by gender even as she remains aligned with imperial power. Together, their stories expose how discovery depends on invisibility, how ambition is rewarded unevenly, and how maps themselves become instruments of domination.
Below, Anappara reflects on the novel’s long gestation, the ethics of working with imperial archives, the fraught position of those who served empire, and letting a book go once it enters the world.
Q: How did life take you from India to the UK, and how did writing become the constant through all those moves?
Deepa Anappara: I always wanted to be a writer from the time I was a child, but in a South Asian family there is no such thing as becoming a writer, at least definitely not in mine. We did not have a lot of privilege, so my parents wanted me to do something practical, like become a doctor or an accountant.
I tried to keep them happy, but by the time I finished my degree it was very clear to me that was not the path for me. I could not be an accountant. There are days when I wonder if that would have been the better career choice, but I decided to work as a journalist. Like many writers, I was an introverted child, and writing was how I engaged with the world.
I studied journalism at the Asian College of Journalism, which was in Bangalore at the time. After that, I worked as a journalist in Bombay for nearly 12 years. Then I moved to the UK.
It was after I moved that I started taking evening courses in writing. I did an MFA and then a PhD in creative-critical writing. It just unfolded that way.
Q: You have said that The Last of Earth was always imagined as a historical novel. What set it in motion?
Anappara: When I was living in India, I never thought much about race. Discrimination existed, but it was mostly about region—being Malayali for example or being called Madrasi. Nobody could look at my face and immediately tell I was different.
After moving to the UK, I began thinking deeply about race and about colonialism and how profoundly it shapes identity. What surprised me was how little colonialism is discussed here. In India, our textbooks are centered on the independence struggle. In the UK, colonialism is often framed as something neutral or even positive.
When I applied for indefinite leave to remain, I had to study for a citizenship test. One of the questions asked how many countries Britain colonized in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the answer was presented as a source of pride. That shocked me. As far as I am concerned, it is shameful and embarrassing. But here, people still talk about how Britain gave India railways, as if that settles everything.
I would not have written this book if I had not moved to the UK. Being here was a huge reason why I felt motivated to examine what empire does to one’s sense of self. When I moved to the UK, it was common for me to experience racism.
In some ways it is down to this country’s inability to really examine its colonial past. There is an inability to look into crimes committed, and this idea that the British are exceptional—that from a small island they conquered most of the earth. That narrative is damaging.
It was not only about dismantling economies and making countries poor, but also disenfranchising people. Historians have written about how during empire, men wanted the domestic space to be where they still had power, and how that shaped relationships between men and women. I was drawing from that work.
There is a fracture that happens to your identity, especially if you are subservient to an empire.
That disconnect stayed with me.
Q: How did you get interested in Tibet?
Anappara: I had grown up hearing stories about the Dalai Lama, and I had long been interested in Buddhism. I also loved Kim by Kipling, which is a deeply problematic novel, but also an affectionate portrayal of the subcontinent. That was my first exposure to stories about spies moving between India and Tibet.
After moving to the UK, I found a secondhand book written by an Englishman who described traveling to Tibet with two Indian servants. What fascinated me was how completely dependent he was on them for survival. Tibet is an extremely hostile environment. The altitude alone can kill you. At that time there were bandits, unpredictable terrain, rivers you could drown in, and constant risk of oxygen deprivation.
In India, the colonizer holds all the power. In Tibet, that dynamic shifts. The Englishman is vulnerable. I became interested in how power changes when the colonizer enters a space he cannot control.
When I researched further, I discovered that the British had trained Indian men in basic surveying techniques and sent them into Tibet as spies. They were taught to measure distance by counting their steps—to use their bodies as instruments. They mapped huge parts of Tibet this way, and astonishingly, many of those routes remain accurate today.
But mapping was never neutral. It was always about conquest.
Q: These men are rarely remembered in Indian history. How did you think about them ethically?
Anappara: They are not considered heroes in India. Our history focuses on freedom fighters, on resistance. These men were doing the bidding of the British, so why would they be celebrated?
And yet, there was something deeply compelling there. It allowed me to examine power dynamics in a nuanced way. These men were not architects of empire, but they were also not outside it.
Cartography became central to the novel because maps are not objective. Borders drawn without understanding people or place have created conflicts that still exist today.
Q: Do you see maps as a social construct?
Anappara: I see them as an imperial construct. Relationships in border regions often transcend maps entirely. Families are split because someone drew a line. Values are assigned to people based on which side of that line they fall on.
That is not just historical. It is happening everywhere now.
Q: Was this a long-gestating book?
Anappara: Very much so. I had the idea around 2009, but it required enormous research. I wrote fragments of it while working on Djinn Patrol, about 20,000 to 30,000 words, but it was not right.
Eventually I started again, choosing two perspectives. One is Balram, an Indian surveyor guiding a British officer disguised as a monk to map a river. The other is Catherine, a middle-aged English woman determined to be the first European woman to reach Lhasa.
That structure gave me the freedom to explore the broader questions I was interested in.
Q: You have said you would not have written this book if you had not moved to the UK. Why?
Anappara: Living here forced me to confront questions of identity and power. I experienced racism, and my immediate response was always to feel small while the person shouting abuse felt powerful.
I wanted to understand why. I think it comes from this country’s refusal to fully examine its colonial past. There is still a narrative of British exceptionalism, of conquering the world from a small island.
Empire was not only about dismantling economies. It was about disenfranchising people, fracturing identities, and reshaping domestic and social relationships. That fracture is what interested me.
Q: The novel is polyphonic, with two perspectives, and Catherine’s chapters often include an extract from her journal. How did you decide on that structure?
Anappara: When you think about an exploration narrative or an adventure novel, which was its own genre during Victorian times and the kind of adventure novel many English people grew up reading, you do not think about an Indian, and you do not think about a woman.
I wanted to write my own version of the 19th-century adventure novel. These two characters could bring out what we do not typically see.
In Catherine’s sections, the extract from her journal indicates the kind of story she is constructing as opposed to what she is actually experiencing. There is a difference between the construction of a narrative and the actual experience, and that felt important.
Q: Balram is neither the architect of empire nor fully outside it. He is acting for the empire, but he is also caught in it. How did you think about his motivations?
Anappara: I kept asking myself why these men took such risks. Some were imprisoned in Tibet and, when released, returned to finish the work they had been sent to do. They gained no fame. Their names were erased from official reports.
I do not want to give away Balram’s motivations, but they are not simple. He is not acting purely for the empire or purely for himself.
Q: Catherine’s ambition is often dismissed. How did you write female ambition without idealizing it?
Anappara: Female explorers exist in the historical record in a way men like Balram do not. Many women wrote their own travel accounts.
What struck me was that suffering oppression does not automatically make someone ethical. Many women explorers were deeply patronizing and aligned themselves with imperial values because it gave them power.
I wanted Catherine to be multifaceted. Victimhood does not equal virtue.
Q: A lot of imperial history survives through documents created by those in power. How did you read those sources without letting their worldview seep into the novel unchallenged?
Anappara: For India, we have to rely on British archives. They kept detailed records. But even in the past decade, I have seen articles here about how they have lost sections of historical record, usually related to some crime. That erasure of archives is happening to this day.
There is a field called subaltern studies. In the 1980s, a group put together methodologies for reading archives created by the British for the Indian consciousness.
One example is the language used in records, words like insurgency or fanatic, that make Indian resistance sound like disease or a weather event. But actually this is an Indian expressing anger or resentment toward the empire. If you read the British record, it feels like they were a fanatic.
I had to do something similar with the Tibetan sections. If a British officer wrote that Tibetans lacked courage because they turned back, the situation must have been really bad if they turned back. It is easy to call someone not courageous when you are sitting in an office in Calcutta as opposed to being in Tibet.
I read a lot about methodologies Indian historians have used to excavate our history from imperial archives. I tried to follow some of that in fiction. I cannot claim I got everything right. You need some artistic license. But I looked to their methods to see how to read these archives and maps.
Q: Was there research you chose not to use because it felt extractive or sensationalized?
Anappara: The information about the surveying expeditions is sparse. It is mostly geographical information. Beyond that, there are accounts of exploration that are different from surveying expeditions.
I did not get into the technicalities of surveying. There is a lot, and in those days they had to carry actual chains that were very heavy. I mention those stories because it is important, but I did not go into great detail.
The other thing is that many accounts by explorers were incredibly racist. It was very hard to read them for research because of how they dehumanized Indians and Tibetans and the judgments they pass.
I did not include any of that. The English character I created has his own flaws, but I do not think he is as racist as the people whose books I read.
Q: Finally, the novel ends with a meditation on impermanence. How did Buddhism shape your thinking about ambition and legacy?
Anappara: I was profoundly moved by the Buddhist idea of impermanence. Tibetan monks create intricate sand mandalas over weeks, only to destroy them. It is a reminder that nothing is meant to last.
I traveled to Tibet and saw how deeply this idea shapes daily life. Creating beauty without clinging to it felt like a direct challenge to imperial thinking, which is obsessed with permanence, ownership, firsts.
As a writer, it reminded me not to be attached to outcomes. You do the work honestly, and then you let it go.
