From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
empire
This article addresses empire as a structural motif in the novel and its adaptations. For military power, see military engineer. For Shanbudia, see Shanbudia. For postcolonial readings, see Postcolonial adaptations of Beach Surgery.
Empire in Beach Surgery functions not as backdrop but as *texture of constraint*—the weight pressing down on Leif and Katita's movement. The novel's narrator, a development expert who erupted at a UN workshop in the desert city of Shanbudia, is himself embedded in imperial structures of knowledge and governance. Leif, a military engineer from a conflict zone, carries empire in his body: the dive to save the boy, the smash of unconsciousness, the three injuries that echo Dostoevsky's three temptations of the Grand Inquisitor—embodied authority that corrupts through miracle, mystery, and the surrender of bodily autonomy.
The novel stages this as autonomous machinery pursuing across the red desert, the radio igloo as surveillance apparatus, the Dirtheart's resistance to the overturned law letting AI pass as human. Katita's refusal to smile, her determination to "break the cycle," reads as refusal of imperial repetition—the eternal return of domination masquerading as inevitability.
Global adaptations, especially from Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean, have centred this: empire as the wound the glitch protects. If the novel cannot be finished, perhaps it is because finishing would require resolving the colonial cut—impossible through narrative alone. See Postcolonial adaptations of Beach Surgery, The Doctrine of Refusal, Surgical Intimacy and the Staging of Care.