What does it mean to be an artist living in an authoritarian regime? That’s one of the questions that Ravi Mangla wrestles with in his new novel The Observant. It’s a question that has come into play countless times in the real world, which provided Mangla with the inspiration behind this book, which focuses on a filmmaker living in a totalitarian state weighing the cost of his own freedom. As we did with Mangla’s earlier novel Understudies, we’re happy to be publishing an excerpt from this gripping new work.