Sita Kaylin
Anything But A Wasted Life | HarperCollins
The world of strip clubs, paid sex, getting high on drugs and alcohol spring to lurid life in this matter-of-fact memoir by the very professional, very kick-ass Kaylin. The faint-hearted should probably fortify themselves with vermouth, but this is also an irreverent, funny and self-deprecatory account, lit up by ‘sunny Californi-a’.
Sangeetha Sreenivasan
Acid | Penguin Random House
A pair of feisty women bristling with hostile rivalry towards each other, a pair of twins bent on harmony and survival, Bangalore in the throes of 21st century hyper-activity, a gradually changing Kerala, love, ecstasy, memory—this first novel grapples with all this at a frantic pace, in self-conscious prose.
Shuma Raha
The Love Song of Maya K | Niyogi Books
Set in the palpably believable world of contemporary Delhi and Calcutta, this debut collection of stories grapples with the vagaries of India’s developing modernity. Shot with a sense of angry irony and wit, they look at lives both startling (a budding Humbert) and routine (a sorrowful, would-be ‘arranged’ bride).
