HarperCollins to Publish K.R. Meera’s ‘Assassin’

HarperCollins India
is proud to announce the acquisition of
K.R. Meera’s
most anticipated novel
ASSASSIN
(Translated from the Malayalam by J. Devika)
To be published in July 2023

K R Meera’s novel Assassin is her breakthrough novel that is certain to become the literary publishing sensation of 2023. This is a book about one woman’s search for truth, a quest for identity and equity, in today’s India.

Late one night in November 2016, a woman survives an attempt on her life by an unidentified assailant while returning from work. Satyapriya, a middle-aged professional living alone in a big city, escapes unhurt but shaken. The attack happens to take place on the anniversary of the hanging of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, and just a week after the announcement of India’s demonetization drive.

A conversation with her wheelchair-bound father makes her realize that this was no random or mistaken attack, but rather the latest in a series of attempts to kill her. And when her father dies unexpectedly, a devastated Satyapriya is left with the unnerving sense of a much larger conspiracy thickening around her. Her journey to uncover the truth about her assailant and his motive sets into motion a chain of events that will not only compel her to confront her own troubled past but also examine the realities of India in the 21st century.

Culminating on 30th January, on the anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination, Assassin unfolds as a literary thriller even as it explores questions of identity, gender and power, and reflects on the fate of Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy in post-independence India – a place where power, patriarchy, caste and money all conspire to shape the contours of our daily lives.

“K.R. Meera is, of course, one of the most important novelists writing today. Her novel, Hangwoman, was an instant classic, and with Assassin, she has crafted her most urgent and ambitious work to date. Meshing real events with fictional incidents, an engaging plot with biting social commentary, the personal with the political – Assassin is a genre-defying magnum opus that investigates the dangerous times we live in and the roads that led us here. We are hugely excited – and privileged – to be publishing it in J. Devika’s superb translation. It will be one of the highlights of our literary and translations list for the coming year,” says Rahul Soni, Associate Publisher – Literary, HarperCollins India.

Author, K.R. Meera says, ‘I haven’t written any other book relying so much on my own life and times. It is an attempt to chronologise the experiences of a middle-class Indian woman of my generation so as to chronicle our violent voyage as impaired individuals and incomplete citizens, staring from the 1970s, eventually revealing the expand to which our lives has been determined by our fathers’. I dedicate this book to Gauri Lankesh, as it was the lessons from her violent death on the teacher’s day of 2017 that triggered this book.’

Translator J. Devika says, ‘In Malayalam, ‘Gandhi’ was used often as a code word to refer to a certain currency note of high denomination—tragically. Because it seemed that the Mahatma was being murdered again and again, each time his name was pressed into soulless market transactions, and many of those involved bribery and other nefarious activities. Meera’s novel is her recollection of the social transformation that happened in her lifetime, and it tells us how the violence symbolized by this everyday murder of Gandhi permeated all spaces and all acts.’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR & THE TRANSLATOR
K.R. Meera is a multi-award-winning writer and journalist. She is the author of more than a dozen books in Malayalam including novels, novellas, short-story collections, essays and children’s literature. Her novel Aaraachaar, which won the Kendra and the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Awards, was translated by J. Devika as Hangwoman and was shortlisted for the 2016 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her other translated works include Yellow Is The Colour of Longing, The Gospel of Yudas, The Poison of Love, The Unseeing Idol
of Light and The Angel’s Beauty Spots.

J. Devika is a feminist historian, academician, writer, translator and social critic from Kerala. She currently researches and teaches at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, as a Professor. As a bilingual translator, she has translated both fiction and non-fiction books between Malayalam and English. Her translated works include the writings of K.R. Meera, Sarah Joseph and Nalini Jameela, among others.

ABOUT HARPER PERENNIAL:
Harper Perennial is a dedicated imprint for translations, showcasing the finest and most compelling narratives from Indian languages – books that are timeless and stories that capture the essence of their times and the region from which they emanate. In its entirety, the Perennial library which features well over a hundred titles presents the kaleidoscope of India as seen through the eyes of the greatest modern writers writing in the local languages, comprising award-winning and well-loved novels, short fiction, poetry, plays,
memoirs, biographies, and travelogues.

In the recent past, Harper Perennial has published a select list of titles in translation that readers have enjoyed – including S. Hareesh’s JCB Prize winning Moustache (translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil), Jayant Kaikini’s DSC Prize winning No Presents Please (translated from the Kannada by Tejaswini Niranjana), Jnanpith awardee U.R. Ananthamurthy’s novel Avasthe (translated from the Kannada by Narayan Hegde), JCB awardee Benyamin’s shortstories Marquez, EMS, Gulam & Others (translated from the Malayalam by Swarup B.R.), the Crossword Book Award winning Diary of a Malayali Madman by N. Prabhakaran and the JCB Prize shortlisted Valli by Sheel Tomy (both translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil), Vinod Kumar Shukla’s Blue Is Like Blue (translated from the Hindi by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Sara Rai) which won the Atta Galata–Bangalore Lit Fest Award for Best Fiction of the year as well as the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Award, and many others.

ABOUT HARPERCOLLINS INDIA
HarperCollins is also celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, having begun publishing in India in 1992. HarperCollinsIndia publishes some of the finest writersfrom the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live! Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Harvard University Press, Gallup Press, Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet. HarperCollins India has won the Publisher of the Year Award four times at Tata Literature Live! in 2022, 2021, 2018 and 2016, and at Publishing Next in 2021 & 2015. HarperCollins India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers.

For more information, please contact: neha.kesarwani@harpercollins.co.in