The Earthly Playing Field - (Nonaligned) by Radhika Singh (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A speculative novel of anti-imperialist queer imagination set in a science-fictional future that is rooted in the lovingly-portrayed context of the Punjabi global diaspora.

Love and revolution in a crumbling world order . . .

Roma has a full-time job, a mortgage, and a loving family in Queens. Life is good in the center of the Empire, but on the outskirts, soldiers wage a brutal war against a besieged people. When her stepbrother Ranbir entrusts her with a mysterious plant, Roma discovers it's a startlingly sophisticated piece of bioengineered technology that opens a portal for an extra-terrestrial spirit body that brings news of a liberated future.

While Ranbir joins forces with the spirit body to confront the nucleus of automated warfare, his brother Khushbir has more local concerns, and is organizing the Punjabi farmers' protest. Meanwhile, Roma is occupied with existential questions about complicity and faith that have her reconsidering her role within this global struggle.

What follows draws Roma and her family onto the frontlines of the resistance - and in Roma's case, into the path of a woman whose heart will only ever belong to the revolution.

About the Author

Radhika Singh is a writer and editor living in Queens, New York. Her fiction speculates on the presence of magic in this world, the connection to spirit and consciousness, and the power of the people to organize for collective liberation. Her novel Weirdly Tuned Antennae, winner of the 2025 Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest, is forthcoming from FC2 Press; an excerpt was featured in the 2024 Genre issue of The Markaz Review. Her comic Leila Khaled & the Struggle for Liberation, created in collaboration with illustrator Samita Chatterjee, appeared in the 2024 Trade/ Trade Off issue of Comixense magazine. For more information visit: rhsingh.work.