R Sukumar picks his favourite read of 2023

Almost Biblical in its language, Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds while reminiscent (in tone and theme), in some parts, of Hemingway, and in others, of Cormac McCarthy, is an altogether original piece of fiction that can be read at multiple levels. Despite much of the slim volume’s pages featuring just one character, it is, at one level, about people and society. But at another, it is about man (a woman, in this case) and the wild, and the interactions between the two – about how one interacts with and shapes the other.

At a very superficial level, it is the story of a servant girl who escapes from a plague-ridden settlement in the New World in the early years of America’s existence (Jamestown in 1609), but Groff’s telling leaves the reader in very little doubt that this is a narrative that is far bigger in scope. I give you two samples, one from the first page of the book – “In the tall black wall of the palisade, through a slit too seeming thin for human passage, the girl climbed into the great and terrible wilderness” – and one from near the end – “The wind passed, even as it is passing now, over all the people who find themselves so dulled by the concerns of their own bodies and their own hungers that they cannot stop for a moment to feel its goodness as it brushes against them. And feel it now, so soft, so eternal, this wind against your good and living skin.”

It is this telling that lifts what would have otherwise been a brutal (and bloody) tale of escape and survival into an appreciation of society, nature, and life itself. Groff’s written what I consider not just the best book of 2023, but perhaps one of the all-time classics.

READ MORE: HT Editors pick their favourite reads of 2023