Literature and Fiction · Hardback

Whitefield

Sindre Mekjan

Grom is an author and lives in India with his Norwegian-Indian wife, Sneha. When they first moved to India, they dreamed about writing a novel together there. The novel would portray the complexity, the diversity, the rich history of this country that they believe has been negatively portrayed and caricatured in Norway. But at the beginning of the novel, they’ve become disillusioned and lost their faith in India.

A white, Norwegian family moves in next door to them, and they behave in a way that Gorm and Sneha find prejudiced, condescending, and racist, without the family themselves realising this. But when the man, Adrian, falls in love with their Indian maid and starts a relationship with her, Gorm has an extremely negative reaction, not just because Adrian is cheating on his wife, but because he thinks a relationship between Adrian and a casteless, illiterate woman from the slum could never work. He’s convinced Adrian and this woman could never understand each other.

Adrian refuses to admit to the affair, and while the tension between the characters grow, their prejudice become apparent: about Indians and Norwegians, different castes, intellectuals and manual workers.