journal | miscellany | press | podcast | team

Commentary on “The Authentic Copy”

Aswin Prasanth

I wrote “The Authentic Copy” as an exploration of my fascination with originality, authorship, and the uncertainty of truth. I have always been interested in the paradox that every act of creation is also, to some extent, an act of repetition: we inherit images, ideas, styles, memories, and narratives from what came before us.

The story is deliberately influenced by postmodernism, particularly its suspicion of fixed meanings, authoritative histories, and stable notions of authorship. The contradictory dates, forged catalogues, unreliable evidence, and impossible chronology are intended to make the reader question not only the events of the story but the very process by which we decide what is true.

I also wanted the story to function as metafiction. By the end, the reader discovers that the supposed historical source of the narrative may never have existed, turning the story itself into the ultimate forgery. The distinction between reality and fiction consequently collapses.

For me, the central paradox is simple: if there is no identifiable original, can a copy still be called a copy? “The Authentic Copy” is my attempt to leave that question deliberately unresolved.

▪ ▪ ▪

Aswin Prasanth is an Assistant Professor of English at Jain University, Kochi, India. He holds a PhD in English Language and Literature from School of Arts, Humanities and Commerce, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Kochi Campus), India. He is the Academic Essay Editor of Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature and an Editor at Twelve Winters Journal. His articles, book chapters, columns, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Studies in European Cinema, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, The Poet, The Cue, Rain Taxi, Asian Lite International, Everybody’s Reviewing, Mathrubhumi, The New Indian Express, and others.

journal | team | miscellany | podcast | home