When I Hit You

Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018

I must take some responsibility over my own life
I must write my story

Caught in the hook of love, a young woman marries a dashing university professor. A Marxist and former revolutionary, he seems to her the ideal choice and when she moves to a rain-washed coastal town to be with him she has no idea of what is yet to come. For behind her husband’s liberal façade is a carefully hidden sadism and behind closed doors she discovers that her perfect husband is a perfect monster.

As he sets about battering her into obedience she finds that, for her family, her life is worth less than honour, reputation and potential social condemnation.

Pressured by them to stay in the marriage and in fear for her life, she swears to fight back. It is a resistance that will either kill her or set her free.

A memoirist novel, based in part on the author’s own experiences, When I Hit You is both a powerful evocation of one woman’s fight for freedom and a reflection of the damaging impact of traditions of gender, caste and class in contemporary Indian society.