Abstract
When it was published in 2011, Gods Without Men was described by one reviewer, Lisa Appignanesi, as ‘Kunzru’s great American novel’ (2011). There is a note of irony in this description, partly because the very idea of the Great American Novel, or ‘GAN’ as Henry James called it, the encapsulation of the ‘essence’ of a nation as vast, multifaceted, and multicultural as America in novel form (see Buell, 2014), is ironic in itself. But it is also because Hari Kunzru is neither American nor indeed easy to pigeonhole in any one national or racial category, for anyone minded to do