Hari Kunzru's new novel Gods Without Men, gives critic and fellow writer/artist Douglas Coupland the occasion to name the birth of a new genre: Translit.
The prefix "trans," signifies "beyond," as in "Transnational," and Coupland thinks of Kunzru's novel as a novel that, in order to represent the new reality of our times, one in which we live "in a state of possibly permanent atemporality given to us courtesy of the Internet," transcends the limits of the traditional novel, and yet retains some of the long-form writings' quintessences:
Translit novels cross history without being historical; they span geography without changing psychic place. Translit collapses time and space as it seeks to generate narrative traction in the reader's mind. It inserts the contemporary reader into other locations and times, while leaving no doubt that its viewpoint is relentlessly modern and speaks entirely of our extreme present.
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