India, Sept. 26 -- The Wall is speculative fiction set in the future in the imaginary city of Sumer, which is surrounded by the eponymous wall that appears to be impenetrable. This is Gautam Bhatia's first book of fiction. In his other avatar, he is a legal scholar and has published two books on the Indian constitution. Bhatia's first novel is not just an inverse anagrammatical exploration of 'the law', it is also an allegorical examination of the present state of democracy. At a time when major world leaders such as the US president have glorified wall building, a metaphoric discussion of walls and all that they preclude seems more than warranted. The Wall imagines what happens to a state and its people when it completely isolates itself. The city of Sumer has been secluded from the outside world by its fortifications from a long-forgotten time. The priests, called the Shoortans, are trying to build a single origin myth to justify and protect the wall. A group of youth that calls itself the Young Tarafians is out to try and break through to the other side. What the wall precludes most strongly is imagination itself. Like outdated and authoritarian laws, which the ruling elite of Sumer seems to now push through, the wall destroys the very ability of seeing other horizons than the normative. Sunrise is called Wallrise, and the citizens cannot imagine a pure horizon where land or water meet the sky without the presence of a manmade barrier. Mithila's tall task is to get the people to imagine this horizon. It is no wonder that she and the Young Tarafians are influenced by a poet-prophet figure, Taraf, in their quest. Taraf's poetry gives them the means to soar and reimagine a world without walls....