When I Hit You: Or a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2018

LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018

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Seduced by politics, poetry, and an enduring dream of building a better world together, the unnamed narrator falls in love with a university professor. Moving with him to a rain-washed coastal town, she swiftly learns that – what for her is a bond of love – is for him a contract of ownership. As he sets about reducing her to his idealized version of an obedient wife, bullying her and devouring her ambition of being a writer in the process, she attempts to push back – a resistance he resolves to break with violence and rape.

A chronicle of an abusive marriage and a celebration of the invincible power of art, When I Hit You is a smart, fierce, and courageous take on traditional wedlock in modern India. Kandasamy's insightful dissection of what love means when trust is undermined by violence is a brilliant, throat-tightening feminist discourse on battered faces and bruised male egos.