About the Book

FROM THE PATH-BREAKING AUTHOR OF SHANKHINI, PANTY, RUHO AND YOGINI.
A young woman named Riya plays an elaborate game of house with an unsuspecting man; middle-aged Ahana puts on a show of happiness and prosperity on Facebook for complete strangers; Anima, a woman living in an old age home, battles everyday indignities as she bickers with other residents about food, toilets and the caregivers attention.
One of the most daring voices in contemporary Bengali literature, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay explores the raw tensions beneath the everyday life of middle-class Bengal in her writings. Foregrounding sexual autonomy and psychological realism, her stories are bold and visceral in their dissection of the institution of marriage and the search for self. Bandyopadhyay s characters women caught between convention and rebellion, men haunted by desire and guilt move through Kolkata s apartments and public spaces with startling honesty. Mocking and teasing modern patriarchy, her writing at once disturbs and liberates the reader.

About the Author

Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay is a Bengali writer. Her novels Ruho (Abandon), Panty (translated under the same title), Yogini (The Yogini) and Gupto Dhan (Hidden Treasure) have been translated into English and published in the UK and India. She has written nine novels and over fifty short stories since her controversial debut, Shankhini. Bandyopadhyay lives and works in Kolkata.

About the Translator

Sayari Debnath translates from Bengali and Hindi into English. She is a winner of the 2026 PEN Presents x SALT and has been shortlisted for the 2024 and 2026 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation. She is a culture journalist at Scroll.