The Literary Mirror

Sen's debut is a workplace novel disguised as something quieter. Arvind Menon processes visa applications for a mid-sized European consulate and has, for six years, allowed himself exactly one act of discretion annually — a stamped form that should not have been stamped, a file that should have been rejected.

The novel follows the seventh year and the applicant who tests the rule: a young Manipuri classical dancer whose paperwork is in order and whose story, Arvind slowly realises, is not the one on the form. Sen is patient with the reveal, perhaps too patient — the middle section drags where a sharper edit would have cut thirty pages.

Still, the ending, which resists the reader's wish for a clean rescue, is the book's best decision. The Embassy of Small Countries is not about a bureaucrat's redemption; it is about the limits of a single stamp against an entire system, and Sen never pretends otherwise.

“Bureaucracy, in Sen's hands, turns out to be a very patient kind of conscience.”