Written by Huthuka Sumi
Reviewed by Samantha Kokkat and Sujata Noronha
A debut voice to look forward to and a young adult novel worth highlighting—despite limitations in the story—for the evocative prose, memorable characters, and the window it offers into the world, land, stories, and history of the Sumi, a world hitherto non-existent in mainstream Indian children’s literature.
| Publishing Date: 2025 ISBN: 978-9369895915 Page Count: 252 Publisher: HarperCollins India Review Posted Online: October 2026 QBR Reviews Issue: Q3 2026 Categories: Disability | War | Colonialism | Oral Stories | Naga – Sumi | Magical Realism |  |
What stays behind after one finishes reading Giants (HarperCollins, 2025) by Huthuka Sumi is the vividly evoked setting, the prose that flows and breathes much like the subject of the writing, the young 13 year-old protagonist, Kato, and his mental anguish, and the many characters in the story whose beings and characteristics are gently observed. The year is 1943, and the story takes place roughly over the course of a year. Some chapters titled after calendar months indicate this passage of time, and many chapter headings also hint at what that time of the year signifies in the agricultural cycle. Chapter headings such as Lusaqhi: Pre-planting Month-March and Monzaqhi: Weeding Month-May, allow us to enter the rhythms of the village of Ayito-phu, a fictional Sumi village located atop a mountain in Nagaland.
Giants is a book that might catch the attention of any librarian looking to add more books on her shelf that represent different lives and childhoods. It excited us because it promised a window into a community that has barely been presented in mainstream Indian children’s literature. The author writes from within the community, but takes pains to ensure that readers from the outside understand how life is lived, food is prepared, clothes are woven, and joys are celebrated among the Sumis. This presentation is neither dry nor didactic, rather it lifts the narrative. In fact, open any page of the book at random and read, and the prose is likely to stir you. This lyrical prose is one of the most delightful aspects of this novel, and it captures the land and its culture with beauty—the supreme role accorded to oral storytelling among the Sumis is almost tangible, evoked by the stories that mothers tell sons, grandmothers tell grandchildren, neighbours tell each other.
The author writes of an evening, “There were kitchen fires to be kindled and dishes to be put on hearths, and no one seemed inclined to stop and chat. No, that was reserved for the night gatherings around the communal village fires, where fantastic tales would be told, and young girls and boys would see monsters and tigers within the orange tendrils reaching greedily towards heaven.” However, there is a marked absence of young girls in the story. While we see adult women who are not bystanders in this story—though there are spaces that are not accessible to them such as the council hall—we do not see the full lives of any girls.
There is a larger than life quality to the setting of the story, lent by oral stories of creation, rumours of witches, and tales of encounters with fantastical beings in the forest. This is accentuated, when a Timi-ala named Kene, a giant from Sumi creation stories, enters Kato’s life with his own stories about the old beings. The fantasy in Giants, though birthed by the author’s imagination, is inspired by Sumi folk stories and oral traditions, and therefore has its foot strongly in the setting. As readers, we looked forward to this constructed folklore embedded within the narrative, they are not simplistic, ancient, or moralistic.
The author spends time to build the setting, and the protagonist and his life for us, before we are invited to enter the fantastical world along with the protagonist with a knock on the door. While we enjoyed the writing enough to keep us going during this build-up, young readers in the library found the writing and language hard to navigate. While the peppering of Sumi words in the text were arduous for our readers who are far removed from the setting, it was good to realise as the book closed that there is a glossary at the end. The reading experience could have been aided by a possible inclusion of footnotes in the chapters that indicate meanings.
Some chapters have mystical page art in them, which prepares readers’ minds to the fact that Kene will knock on Kato’s door in that chapter—one gets ready for magic. Kene has come to Kato because the old beings are going to enter a long sleep in a land changing quickly, and needs a storyteller so that they wouldn’t be forgotten. Kato is the chosen storyteller, and though shocked to meet Kene, the young boy soon trusts the timi-ala, about whom he has heard stories multiple times from his mother.
We soon realise that for young Kato who feels ostracised for a speech disability, the fantastical world where he is able to borrow his friend Apu’s voice is an escape. Interestingly, Kato’s speech disability is not revealed to the reader till he reaches school and encounters ridicule for it. Maybe because of that, his disability is not the first thing that comes to mind when we think of him. The writer succeeds in ensuring that the disability does not become the defining factor of his characterisation.
However, while readers may remember Kato for his exuberance, the speech disability consumes all other aspects of his identity for him. How Kato sees himself and readers see Kato is strikingly different. The young boy repeatedly wonders why Kene came to him, “a mute”, when he needed a storyteller. In a way, Giants is a story in which Kato learns to embrace and celebrate himself. A scene following a leopard hunt where Kato lets his friend Apu take the fall for his own wrongdoing is one of the most genuine. Though brave and courageous, Kato, an already ridiculed child who carries the burden of shame for his speech impairment is unable to come forward to admit to his folly. The smallness, pains, and dilemmas he undergoes as he chooses silence over integrity is touching and honest. It paves the path for the reader to understand the boy’s inner being and turmoil. Children and adults who read this were moved, sympathised with young Kato, his need for acceptance, and the disappointment he felt in letting his parents down. Sometimes, it felt like he was carrying too huge a burden.
As Kato journeys towards accepting himself and embracing hope many narratives are brought in, some deep and some superficial. From the onset, we learn that the village is undergoing many changes. The white man’s presence is felt in the peripheries, and with them have come half-pants, funny-looking hats, cameras, and formal school education, all sources of fascination.
What flips life entirely, however, is the guns, bombs, and planes that the British bring to the village. The Sumis are no strangers to warfare, but know that their weapons and methods are no match for guns and bombs that can blow up life into smithereens within a blink. Premonition is limited, and when the Kohima War of 1944 lands at Ayito-phu more than halfway into the book the reader is likely to be surprised, and one would think this would be a hook for a young reader. But Giants falls short in building this narrative adequately, and it is used mainly as a device among others to further the story forward. Though of a different genre, one is reminded of a novel from Mizoram, Postcard from the Lushai Brigade (Duckbill, 2023) by Hannah Lalhanpuii, that also focuses on Japanese attempts to invade British India, and how a book with a clear focus is likely to be more successful in its overall impact.
The attempts to bring fantasy and history together in Giants, does not altogether land. While there is joy in the setting and build up, there is a sense of rush and hurry in how the problems are resolved. However, what the writer succeeds in doing quite effortlessly is convey the pains of young Kato whose life is changed by the war, and this is likely to pull at any reader’s heartstrings.
Ultimately, Giants is a story of the land and its people and the stories they tell each other so that their roots don’t wither. The land, the trees, and the mountains, are living, breathing beings with a literal beating heart in the novel. But the narrator draws from the age-old wisdom of the old ones like Kene who have lived for longer than one can imagine to remind us that no one is immortal and anyone can be forgotten. The only way to remember is through stories, “The stories, that is how we live,” says Kene. If one zooms out it seems like, Giants is an act of remembering, Huthuka Sumi employing his skills as a storyteller, like Kato, to ensure that memory is preserved.
All the while we are reminded that he is writing of his own community and possibly for his community. In an interview Sumi says, “I am speaking to my people directly through the book.” The setting may seem far removed for many children reading in English in India, but it is not exoticised. When the village gathers for the leopard hunt, the reader is told that this is a rare occasion, lest we equate a special day with day to day. The stories are Sumi, neither Naga, nor clubbed together as North Eastern. While this novel fills a gap, does not do so in an instrumental fashion, and is worthy of celebration, we were reminded by children in no uncertain words that for them to read a book that will make their life worlds richer, the story has to be stronger, more entertaining, and more accessible.
Other Books
- Afo and I by Canato Jimo, Pratham Books, 2023
- A Postcard from the Lushai Brigade by Hannah Lalhlanpuii, Duckbill (Penguin Random House India), 2023
- The Rain-Maiden and the Bear-Man by Easterine Kire, Seagull Books, 2021
- When Blackbirds Fly by Hannah Lalhlanpuii, Duckbill (Penguin Random House India), 2022