REVIEW: Noted: Faux footnotes and a false frontispiece

Review of Dakawaku, by Anurag Subramani

Abstract

Dakawaku, by Anurag Subramani. Honolulu: Lo’ihi Press, 2021. 327 pages.

THIS book tries very hard to be very clever, with a thousand literary, Pacific and other allusions dripping from every page and a writing style that is (I think) intended (perhaps) to mirror the comic prose of Swift and Boswell. There are copious faux footnotes, a false frontispiece, addenda, exhortations to the reader and other literary devices that have not been seen since the steam press was invented. It is, in short (possibly) an attempt at what we used to call a picaresque novel in first year lit.