Publisher's Synopsis
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018
SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2018
LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018
Guardian's Best Books of 2017
Daily Telegraph's Best Books of 2017
Observer Best Books of 2017
Financial Times Best Books of 2017
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.
