Assassin by K R Meera

Late one night in November 2016, Satyapriya, a middle-aged professional living alone in a big city, is attacked by an unidentified assailant. Though she escapes unhurt, a conversation with her paralysed father reveals that this was no random incident but the latest in a series of attempts to kill her. And when he dies unexpectedly soon after, a devastated Satyapriya sets out to unravel the conspiracy coiling around her.

Beginning at the height of India’s demonetization drive and culminating on the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, this is a novel that raises uncomfortable questions of identity and gender in a country where power, patriarchy, caste and money conspire every day to shape the contours of women’s lives.

K.R. Meera’s Assassin – originally published in Malayalam as Ghathakan, and brilliantly translated by J. Devika – is a genre-defying magnum opus that every Indian must read.