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Meena Kandasamy

When I Hit You

Cover: When I Hit You - Meena Kandasamy

Meena Kandasamy

When I Hit You

2020, pp. 224, Paperback
ISBN: 9781609455996
Region: Britain
Available as ebook Available as ebook Available as ebook
$ 17.00

The book

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018

LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2018

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Observer, Financial Times)

“Meena Kandasamy’s vivid, sharp and precise writing makes a triumph of When I Hit You.”
Guardian

Set in modern India, the unnamed narrator falls in love with a university professor and agrees to be his wife. Based on the author’s own experience of marriage, soon the newly-wed experiences extreme violence at her husband’s hands and finds herself socially isolated. Intellectual and physical cruelty is explored. Yet hope keeps her alive and she knows that writing can be her salvation. Writing becomes her supreme act of defiance and as the subtitle suggests, the novel is also about the act of writing itself and the way that fiction and stories can help you escape.

Though a harrowing story, Kandasamy’s writing is also funny, tender and lyrical. When I Hit You is smart, fierce, and courageous.

The author

Meena Kandasamy
Meena Kandasamy is a poet, fiction writer, translator, and activist who lives in Chennai and London. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms. Militancy, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Gypsy Goddess. This is her second novel.

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