Unprecedented Times

Rishi Is Done Trying to Save the World

Unprecedented Times centers Rishi, a burned-out young climate activist whose former idealism has collapsed into a much more immediate desire to live, connect, and have gay sex. Then the COVID pandemic arrives and makes every personal choice feel tangled with a crisis again.

Online College Loses to a Farm Collective

Rather than drift through remote classes, Rishi forms a farm collective with friends. The project offers practical purpose and communal life at a moment of isolation, but gathering queer college students into one confined space also gives every attraction and disagreement room to intensify.

The Collective Cannot Keep Relationships Tidy

Friendship, desire, politics, and shared labor quickly become complicated. Malavika Kannan treats that mess as the substance of coming of age, not a distraction from it: building a different way to live does not make the people involved less contradictory.

Gen Z Meets the Crisis That Changed the Script

The novel captures a generation asked to solve vast problems while still trying to become adults. Rishi’s retreat from activism does not remove her from history; it relocates the struggle to a farm, a friend group, and the question of what a livable future looks like up close.