Dystopian Mumbai: Futurism in Varun Thomas Mathew’s The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay

Dystopian science fiction narratives often serve as a powerful medium for imagining the post-apocalyptic scenarios of contemporary socio-political realities. In the context of South Asia, the intersection of multinational capitalism and corrupt politics within a dystopian setting provides a poignant commentary on the region’s vulnerabilities and systemic injustices. Varun Thomas Mathew’s The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay (2019) is set in the year 2041, where the tropical city of Mumbai is seen to be recuperating in the aftermath of a massive flood that has led to the rehabilitation of its city-dwellers into ‘Bombadrome’, a towering structure developed by the state-corporate alliance. This paper situates the novel within the framework of South Asian Futurisms, exploring how colonial histories and environmental precarity shape dystopian imaginaries of this tropical region. The book presents a cityscape that becomes a contested space for extrapolating and interrogating narratives of past(s) and future(s), a recurring theme in contemporary speculative fiction. This paper focuses on representations of environmental change and techno-capitalist ideologies that emerge as recent Anglophone Indian literature takes a dystopic turn. The reading explores new thematic possibilities within dystopian literature, positioning Mathew’s novel within a broader discourse on tropical speculative fiction.