The Passenger Seat

A searing examination of male friendship and the broader social implications of masculinity in an age of toxic loneliness

In a small town in North America, two boys, or men, embark on a vaguely charted road trip through the northern wilderness with little more than canned food and secondhand camping gear--and the rifle they buy on their way out of town for reasons neither seems able to articulate. The more they handle the gun, and the farther they get from their parents’ houses and their peers, girlfriends and online gaming, the grim future that awaits them in their nowhere town, the less their actions--and the games, literal and metaphorical, they play--are bound by the usual constraints, and when Alvin decides to harass a young couple they meet on the highway, the outcome is irreversible, and leads them even further down a road from which there’s no turning back.

A searing examination of male friendship and the broader social implications of masculinity in an age of toxic loneliness, The Passenger Seat introduces Vijay Khurana as an powerful new voice in fiction.

Vijay Khurana is a writer and translator based between Berlin and London. His work has appeared in NOON, The Guardian, 3: AM Magazine, The Erotic Review and elsewhere. He is currently completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at Queen Mary, University of London, researching the disembodied voice and its effect on diaspora, long-distance relationships and loneliness. An excerpt from his translation of the German novel Red (Hunger) by Senthuran Varatharajah appears in the 2024 White Review translation anthology. The Passenger Seat, his first novel, was shortlisted for the 2022 Novel Prize.