By: Robin Fowler
As modern fiction continues to experiment with fractured timelines, interconnected characters, and evolving social commentary, author Tejas Desai is taking those ideas even further with Bad Americans: Part II, the newest installment in The Human Tragedy series.
Rather than following a traditional linear structure, the novel unfolds through layered narratives, competing perspectives, romantic entanglements, and stories nested inside a larger frame narrative. The result is a sprawling literary work that attempts to capture the complexity, contradictions, and emotional volatility of contemporary American life.
Desai describes the project in ambitious terms.
“Bad Americans is an extravaganza of storytelling and entertainment as well as the pleasures and punctures of life.”
That philosophy shapes nearly every aspect of the book. Stories such as “A Model Citizen,” “Cape Conundrum,” “A Manchurian Algerian,” and “Dope Double Ditty” operate as individual narratives while also contributing to a broader emotional and thematic structure. According to Desai, one of the major challenges was making the stories feel independent while still reflecting a unified perspective.
“I think it’s easier for people to read the stories not only as separate narratives but also as an expression, albeit a complex one, of the storyteller’s point of view,” he explained. “As in the previous book, you can check out within a story but still see the larger picture within the frame.”
At the center of the novel are evolving relationships, shifting loyalties, and emotional misunderstandings that ripple outward into larger consequences. Readers familiar with Hayley and Pritesh from the first installment will see their relationship continue to evolve in ways that Desai says intentionally challenge expectations surrounding romance and personal growth.
“I think that in a lot of books these days, characters don’t really change, so I wanted to buck that trend,” Desai said.
That emphasis on transformation appears throughout the novel. Characters collide, separate, reconnect, and reinterpret each other over time, creating a network of emotional intersections that Desai believes mirrors real life more honestly than neatly resolved narratives.
The book also explores how identity and storytelling overlap. One story by a transgender seamstress named Sylvania blends themes of reinvention, ambition, fame, and self-discovery while also commenting on broader cultural myths surrounding success and identity in America.
Desai says the novel’s conflicts are designed to reflect contemporary social tensions without losing sight of entertainment value.
“We live in an era of much diversity and conflict, and the narrative just reflects that reality, but in a more entertaining way,” he explained. “The crises just show how people have assumptions and fixed notions about other people.”
One of the book’s most unusual structural elements arrives in “Dope Double Ditty,” which features two competing storytellers whose narratives interact and clash simultaneously. Desai says the idea emerged from wanting the novel’s climax to embody the larger themes of rivalry, perspective, and narrative tension already present throughout the book.
“With so many stories incorporating such a variety of styles, subjects and viewpoints, I felt that a book centered around romantic relationships and conflicts between different types of people should climax with the ultimate ‘Double Story,’” he said.
Literary influences also play a major role in the novel’s architecture. Desai openly cites classic frame narratives such as The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and The Arabian Nights as foundational inspirations. During his time studying abroad at the University of Oxford, he became deeply interested in the idea of stories existing inside larger narrative worlds.
“I made a vow to myself to one day write a book of stories within a larger frame story,” Desai said, recalling his experience studying classical literature and philosophy at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries.
Still, Desai insists that Bad Americans: Part II is not simply an homage to literary tradition. He sees the novel as an attempt to modernize and expand those storytelling techniques for a contemporary audience shaped by media saturation, online identities, fragmented social experiences, and rapidly shifting cultural dynamics.
Unlike many modern interconnected story collections, the characters within the frame narrative are themselves storytellers, forcing readers to consider the stories being told as well as the motivations and psychologies behind the people telling them.
“The frame narrative presents people from all walks of life,” Desai explained. “It gives this 360 view of a story rather than the blanket view that a short story in a typical collection provides.”
That panoramic approach appears to be central to the broader goals of The Human Tragedy series itself, which Desai describes as an attempt to create a wide-ranging portrait of American society through overlapping lives, competing perspectives, and emotionally charged encounters.
Ultimately, despite the book’s literary experimentation and structural ambition, Desai says the emotional core remains rooted in something deeply human: connection.
“I hope that people realize that we all need each other,” he said. “While it’s so easy to hurt each other and despair of life in this turbulent and unfair world, at the end of the day, it’s our human connections that also hold us together and make life worth living.”
Bad Americans: Part II is now available on Amazon and other major retailers. You can find more information about Tejas Desai on his Instagram.
