Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors

ARAVIND JAYAN

From Shelf: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2023

A brilliant young writer from India with a funny, moving debut that perfectly captures the perils of online culture

'Truly infectious' Guardian Appa and Amma have driven home a shiny new Honda Civic to show off to their neighbours in Blue Hills housing colony. But their triumph is short lived. Their eldest son Sreenath is behaving strangely, and the reason soon becomes clear: a secretly filmed video of Sreenath and his girlfriend Anita has been posted to a porn site, and nearly everyone they know has seen it. The ensuing war - with Sreenath and Anita on one side and their families on the other - becomes a news sensation, emblematic of a wider generational struggle. The novel is narrated by Sreenath's younger brother, just as eager to rebel against conventional morality. But to keep his family together he will have to compromise his integrity and, in doing so, bring buried tensions between him and his brother to the surface. Full of dark comedy and insight about shame and the online generation, this is a poignant story about now told by a narrator who will beguile and surprise you.