Category: Non-fiction
Publisher: Penguin Random House India (forthcoming)
Rights: World rights available (excluding Indian subcontinent)
Fourteen-year-old Hari works as a domestic help, hoping to earn big as he undertakes hard, and dangerous work; Radha, his mother, is a sanitation worker at a hospital. Their family is their neighbourhood’s envy as they prosper, win hearts of their employers, dare to hope for better lives until their truth emerges: pretending to be Hindus, they are Muslims who crossed over from Bangladesh.
A true tale of a family living in a Kolkata slum, the fast-paced book combines reportage and narration. It follows their imaginations, and their courage as the refugees cross borders, arrive at the slum and slowly discover the true contours of a metropolis amidst tensions over religion, caste, sex, politics, power and India’s favourite new word – nationalism.
The author: Nidhi Dugar