Temporary People

Unnikrishnan refuses to occupy a single style or register, as if to inoculate the reader against settling on any one idea of what the U.A.E. is, or of what it means... [It] works wonders, jolting the readerly brain away from abstraction and directing it toward the fine grain of life. Unnikrishnan isn't papering over the frequent harshness of noncitizen life, or denying how degrading it can be. But he is insisting that there is more to the story — that the people in the place have rich interior lives shot through with memories, desires, and confusions.' — Peter C. Baker, The New YorkerIn the United Arab Emirates, foreign nationals constitute over 80 percent of the population. Brought in to construct and serve the towering monuments to wealth that punctuate the skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, this labor force is not given the option of citizenship. Some ride their luck to good fortune. Others suffer different fates. Until now, the humanitarian crisis of the so-called...