Conceived in India, published by New York-based Authors Equity, distributed worldwide by Simon & Schuster, the science fantasy epic arrives with a dedicated early reader community, an audiobook narrated by Hugo Weaving, and a foreword by Anil Seth.
Indiawide release: Filmmaker Anand Gandhi (Ship of Theseus, Tumbbad) and game designer Zain Memon (SHASN, AZADI) will make their fiction debut with Maya: Seed Takes Root, releasing in bookstores around the world on August 25, 2026. Conceived and led from India, the novel is published by Authors Equity in New York, ahead of its distribution by Simon & Schuster.
The novel is available for preorder in all major US retailers including Barnes & Noble, Target, Books-A-Million, Bookshop.org, and Amazon, with the audiobook available through Audible and Spotify. Preorders in India open on August 25, with fulfillment beginning in September.
For first-time novelists Gandhi and Memon, the route to publication is as significant as the scale: Maya arrives in the international trade market directly with a global publication, not a later sequence of foreign-rights sales. It was first introduced to the world with a Kickstarter campaign, where it became the highest funded debut novel in the platform’s history. The early reader community championing it has since grown to 5,378 readers and $547,896.
“Whoever controls the stories controls our dreams and nightmares, our very desires and fears. Their whispers become our will.”
This is the central provocation of Maya, an original science fantasy epic built as a mythology for the age of artificial intelligence, big data, and narrative control.
An insect will soon go extinct. Seven years later, this will cause a civil war that kills millions.
The Divyas know this. Through their planetwide network of Maya trees, they can see all that is, and therefore, predict all that will be. They intervene invisibly. The insect will survive. The war will never happen. No one will ever know.
On Neh, seven species tether daily to Maya, entering shared dreamscapes to work, learn, play, and commune with the living and the dead. The Divyas rule Neh without armies. Why force obedience when you can shape desire itself?
Now, the Divya Trials have been announced. Billions will compete. One will ascend to godhood. In every future predicted by the Maya network, the outcome is certain: The son of a god will win.
Kshar disagrees. He has rehearsed the scion’s assassination a hundred times inside Maya’s simulations and predicted every variable. Except one. Yachay, a nineteen-year-old maker of riddles, has never tethered to Maya.
“We’re living through the greatest experiment in narrative control in human history,” says Gandhi. “Every platform is a Maya tree, every algorithm owned by a Divya. We wanted to make that visible, and imagine what ‘better’ might look like.”
Maya: Seed Takes Root is systems fiction for the age of big data, artificial intelligence, and institutionalized extraction. It asks: Who controls our stories? Who profits from our data? And in an age of perfect prediction, is freedom still possible?
“This isn’t another chosen one story,” says Memon. “It is about the systemic nature of control and the unexpected places where resistance takes root. Every character believes they are doing the right thing, even those orchestrating mass suffering.”
The novel does not place an inherited mythology inside an imagined future. It built a new mythology arising from the present, over five years with more than 200 writers, game designers, filmmakers, biologists, architects, linguists, and artists across the world. Its species, ecosystems, technologies, cities, languages, and political orders were developed as systems in contact and conflict, allowing stories to emerge from the pressures of the world.
The audiobook, published by Simon & Schuster Audio, is narrated by Hugo Weaving (The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings). Neuroscientist Anil Seth, author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, has written the foreword. He calls the novel “a book of extraordinary riches… provocative philosophical nuggets wrapped in a narrative both sweeping and immersive.”
Ahead of its publication, Maya has been covered by Variety, Esquire India, The Hollywood Reporter India, Gizmodo’s io9, and Nautilus. io9 premiered an exclusive excerpt from Weaving’s audiobook narration, while Nautilus selected the novel for its August 2026 reading list. Esquire India called it “a narrative superstructure… a story that rewires the way we tell stories in the first place.” The Hollywood Reporter India described it as “an ambitious, eye-popping sci-fi fantasy universe… an allegory of our hyperconnected world.”
Maya: Seed Takes Root is the first entry point into an expansive narrative universe unfolding across books, games, films, graphic novels, toys, and immersive experiences. Every word and every pixel of Maya has been created with care by humans, for humans.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Anand Gandhi is a defining voice in contemporary Indian cinema. His philosophical triptych Ship of Theseus and mythological horror Tumbbad are among the most celebrated films of their generation, with honors at the international film festivals of Toronto, Venice, Transylvania, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.
Zain Memon is an acclaimed game designer. His bestselling board games SHASN and AZADI are played in over 70 countries. His work has won the Games for Change and IndieCade awards.
ABOUT DEPARTMENT OF LORE
Founded by Anand Gandhi and Zain Meyugmon, Department of Lore creates original narrative universes across media formats. Its flagship universe, Maya, transforms collective human experience into civilizational wisdom.
