Overwinter

The most important man in Ketaki’s life – her maternal aunt Neera’s husband – falls into a coma after a near-drowning incident. Brought face to face with the threat of losing someone deeply loved, someone who has been more than a surrogate parent to her since her mother’s passing, Ketaki continues to swing between the solely sexual and altogether platonic relationships she has had with men – all the while battling to bring down the wall of her aunt’s reserve. The silence between niece and aunt calcifies, only to be broken when Ketaki’s father visits from New York and shares with her a long-festering family secret. Set in the quiet leafy enclaves of South Delhi, Overwinter lays bare the menace that throbs between the order and decorum of domesticity. Agleam with razor-like observations in distilled and disturbing prose, this debut novel, which was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, investigates the cold hard internalisations of family betrayal and hurt.