Requiem of a Lost Nation

Floods, heatwave, hurricanes and storms — wild weather rips parts of the earth. While experts attribute these to El Niño and climate change, one wonders if peace and lifestyle choices could have any impact to reverse the changes on our home planet. Do wars add to our deep distress? We lose people, homes, what we nurtured and loved, the beautiful cities and structures we built, even forests, fields and rivers. The nuclear holocausts, the killing fields of the World Wars, the mined fields of Cambodia and Vietnam which continue to maim farmers… all these should have taught us to avoid wars but now when the television throws up images of war-torn zones, one wonders if those are worse than climate disasters?

In climate disasters we lose lives, homes and cities too — but people can step in to help and rebuild after the disaster. In a war setting, rescue workers are at a risk as bombs mow down terrain and destroys the tenor of daily lives. The disasters born of climate change too can be irreversible — especially with rising water levels, depleting shorelines and warmer climes ripped by storms. Which is worse — wars or climate disasters? What do you think? Could we go back to a pollution free world and reverse the darker impacts of climate change?

Just as history accepted wars and moved on, perhaps the time has come when climate change has to be accepted as a part of the new reality, and we have to find new ways of life. Exploring such stories is a book by Rajat Chaudhuri, The Climate Crossroads: Literature’s Encounter with a Planet on Fire. It has been reviewed by Bhaskar Parichha who tells us: “It reminds us that the climate crisis is not solely a scientific or political problem but also a crisis of imagination. Rajat Chaudhuri demonstrates with remarkable insight that stories are among humanity’s most powerful tools for understanding uncertainty, confronting ecological loss, and envisioning more just futures.” Somdatta Mandal, on the other hand, has brought in more on environment with her discussion of Siddharth Kak’s A Fire over Mount Everest. Andreas Geisbert adds colour to this section with his exploration of Angel Ramon’s Requiem of a Lost Nation. Satya Narayan Misra has reflected on Bhaskar Parichha’s Icons of Odisha – Lives that Shaped a State, a non-fiction whose excerpt tells us much about the journey of the author to bring to us community builders in various streams of life. We also have a bit from Kanupriya Dhingra’s non-fiction about a book bazaar that flourishes despite bookshops finding it hard to survive, The Sunday Book Bazaar: Daryaganj and the Making of a Reading Public in Delhi.

Our interviews this month touch upon environmental issues with Keith Lyons conversing with Helen Townsend, environmental entrepreneur and plant enthusiast who is high on sustainability and earth friendly solutions while Suzanne Kamata has interviewed Lily West who has travelled to all the countries in the world and has put it all down in her memoir, West goes East. Like Kamata, she teaches in Japan now. Kamata has also given us a humorous piece on remote controls. Humour is a sentiment that has also been wrought into our nonfiction with a flourish by Devraj Singh Kalsi too. He writes of his wedding sherwani almost with a passion like the Dickensian Ms Havisham[1] exhibited for her crumbling wedding gown, except it has a different tone — that of wry tongue-in-cheek irony. Farouk Gulsara has a similar twinge of sarcasm as he muses on uncertainties in the future. Ian C Smith brings in a bit of the weather as he muses on a rainy day while Subramaniam Cheemalapati muses on the star-studded sky, dwelling on his anecdotal childhood experiences. Gowher Bhat introduces us to an aid worker who helps war victims. Meredith Stephens continues on her sailing adventures in Western Australia with photographs by her husband, Alan Noble. The photograph of the pink jellyfish is awesome. Do check it out!

Mandal has also explored six dance-dramas by Tagore translated from Bengali and Brajbuli by Indrani Haldar while Charudutta Panigrahi introduces us to an eighteenth-century literary giant, Upendra Bhanja, who gave up his crown not only to write but to found styles that are used to this date. Ravi Varmman K Kanniappan dwells on the contemporariness of ancient Sangam Literature with discussions on a narrative based on trust and power politics.

Fiction brings to us varied colours with a story from Jonathon B. Ferrini that almost has the lilt of a Hemingway novel. Naramsetti Umamaheswararao gives us a fable about a mischievous monkey with a ‘moral’ et all. Darshana Dutta shares a short fiction set in a fast-paced social media centric world while Sayan Sarkar gives a heartwarming story set in Kolkata. Mohul Bhowmick explores Hyderabad from the perspective of a woman.

Translations have brought in a shower of poetry with Tagore’s poem on a rainy-day hinting at shared confidences. Professor Fakrul Alam has translated Bengali lyrics Nazrul wrote for his friend and mentor, Rabindranath Tagore. Ihlwha Choi has brought to us a whiff of the Korean summer with his verses and Fazal Baloch has brought to us soulful poems from Balochi by Mohammad Hussain Anqa. Isa Kamari’s translations carry a flavour of Malay life in Singapore, and this set of verses bring to a close his book, The Lost Mantras. We are very privileged to have his entire book translated solely in our pages. Isa Kamari is an eminent literary voice of the Malay Singaporean community.

We have variety in poetry by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Maithreyi Karnoor, Jyotish Chalil Gopinathan, Norman J. Olson, Shamim Akhtar, SR Inciardi, Deepa Srivastava, Ron Pickett, Tanisha Tanwar, Jane Downing, Snehaprava Das, Snigdha Agrawal, and John Swain. Quite a few poems are to do with nature and environment. And humour — our best bet at surviving dark times — is chiselled into this section by Ryan Quinn Flanagan who dwells on the idea of a fountain of youth! And the inimitable Rhys Hughes brings us a genii of a Moka Pot! Is it funny? You tell me! He has gone back to his coffee mania – remember he had written The Coffee Rubaiyat and had a whole book called The Sunset Suite where they told tales over mugs of coffee – a bit in the tradition of Arabian Nights!

We have news about our hardcopy poetry anthology. We have had six media coverages in less than three months. Professor Malashri Lal deems: “For those of us who still believe in principles of care and compassion, humanism and amity, Wild Winds is a lifeline to keep afloat…It is especially commendable for wrapping global concerns in the fine tissue of hope.” And Mandal tells us: “Reading through these one hundred poems is indeed a pleasurable experience even for readers with a more prosaic temperament.” We are delighted that the book has had a warm welcome. Huge thanks to our publishers for giving us a hardcopy platform.

Thanks to all our contributors, readers and the fabulous team that make borderlessjournal.com come alive each month with a vibrant soul. Huge thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Do pause by our contents page for the July 2026 issue.

We wish you all happy reading!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com

[1] Great Expectations (1861) by Charles Dickens

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Book Review by Andreas Giesbert

Title: Requiem of a Lost Nation

Author: Angel Ramon

Angel Ramon is best known for his B-movie horror books. The Frogmaster, as he is called because he unleashed a whole swarm of killer frogs onto the zombie genre, is quite popular in the independent horror community.

With Requiem of a Lost Nation, however, he takes a completely different path. Instead of entertaining B-movie horror, he explores his own family history and the generational trauma caused by the Salvadoran Civil War. Loosely based on the life of his beloved mother, the novel follows Otilia, who, after emigrating to the United States, returns to El Salvador to come to terms with her harrowing experiences during the Civil War that lasted from 1979 to 1992.

This is done in a rather interesting way, as the novel alternates between chapters set in the present day (2019) and chapters depicting Otilia’s childhood, particularly the events during the outset of the Civil War atrocities 1980-1982. Together with diary entries and reports by British journalist Jon Snow—whose original reports can actually still be found on streaming services—the book leads us into the complexities of Salvadoran culture and politics. We learn about the country’s social divide, its invisible walls, and the Red Scare.

What makes this especially interesting is that Otilia—just like the author—comes from a very conservative background. Raised in a wealthy household, she was heavily influenced by her father, whose hatred of the communist rebels shaped her worldview. Looking back, however, she revises many of these beliefs and arrives at a more balanced perspective. That saves the novel from descending into one-sided accusations. In the end, it boils down to the idea that “both sides were to blame,” or, more poetically: “War was a demon indeed. It didn’t care who got hurt.”

Talking about demons: just to be clear, despite the monster on the cover, this is not a horror novel. It certainly deals with the horrors of war, which can easily be described as demonic, but there are no supernatural elements. More importantly, it isn’t about suspense or the specific atmosphere of dread that Lovecraft once described as essential to horror fiction. Requiem of a Lost Nation is best described as historical fiction.

Especially during the first quarter of the book, I learned a great deal about Salvadoran culture, its social structure, and the causes of the Civil War. Unfortunately, from that point on, it falls a little short. This is mostly due to its rather limited level of analysis. Ultimately, the novel tells us that both sides share responsibility and that war and forced migration can result in identity crises and generational trauma.

My overall impression is mixed though, because the novel uses some rather obvious foreshadowing, and for a historical novel there are simply a few too many convenient coincidences to remain believable. On the other hand, the integration of Spanish dialogue works very well. The passages are paraphrased seamlessly, so readers who don’t understand Spanish won’t miss any important information, while the original dialogue adds considerably to the atmosphere. Unfortunately, such strengths are offset by a handful of odd sentence constructions. Besides these criticisms, I am always appreciative when genre authors step outside their comfort zone. Ramon certainly deserves credit for taking such a personal path and writing the book he clearly felt he had to write.

This requiem is not over yet. While the novel reaches a natural stopping point, it leaves several plot threads and foreshadowed events unresolved. A second volume is planned for late 2027 and will presumably focus on Otilia’s life in the United States.

Andreas Giesbert is a reviewer of speculative fiction, board games and more based in the Ruhr Valley. He mostly writes for online magazines such as www.zauberwelten-online.de, or Ginger Nuts of Horror.

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