THE BOOK
In the remote Mahamaya Valley in the Himalayas, wildlife
biologist Tara has vanished. Hunting for answers, Tara’s best
friend Mansi sets out to retrace her whereabouts in the days
before her disappearance. The prime suspect Bhaskar sits in police
custody, his obsession with Tara laid bare, his testimony a
labyrinth of contradictions and half-truths. As the investigation
deepens, the valley reveals its own mysteries—a backpacker
paradise where the timeless and the ephemeral collide, where
technology and nature clash, and where a woman's voice can be
silenced in countless ways.
Rendered in exquisite prose, Real Life is a gripping mystery that
transforms into a masterful exploration of love and loss, visibility
and erasure, AI and surveillance and the never-ending tussle
between individual desires and societal demands.
In an age of surveillance and enforced conformity, what does it
mean for a woman to seek a more authentic, real existence?

THE AUTHOR
Amrita Mahale was born in Mumbai and grew up in five cities
across India. Milk Teeth, her first novel, was published to
widespread acclaim in 2018 and was longlisted for the JCB Prize for
Literature and shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award for
Fiction. She was trained as an aerospace engineer at IIT Bombay
and Stanford University.