Megha Majumdar

she's somebody who has a narrative imposed on her by the state.

There are aspects of her identity, elements of her background that make her susceptible to this kind of narrative where somebody can look at her and say, well, she is unpatriotic.

She's disloyal because of these reasons.

And she has to push back against that narrative.

So much of her

struggle in the book is trying to figure out well if the systems aren't listening to me how can I get my story out

I think I would have to begin with the kind of earliest books that I read as a kid, the books that exposed me to writing in English, which at the time was the language that I struggled with.

So

For me, a huge part of becoming a writer has been really tracing it back to that early childhood freedom to go to these used bookstores and libraries and pick out copies, worn copies of Nancy Drew's and Hardy Boys and a lot of Enid Blyton stories.

Babysitter's Club, that kind of thing.

I read a lot of mysteries when I was a kid, you know, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie.

And I think that I absorbed lessons about velocity and suspense and narrative from those books.

is part of the great charm is of course you want to find out what happened and why why did somebody do this so keeping a reader immersed in such a story um that takes great craft and I think by just devouring those books I learned quite a bit and then of course um

Later, I came to so many books that I love, authors like Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Daniel Moinuddin, Deepak Onnikrishnan.

And I feel like I learned something from every book that I read.

I could speak forever about books that I love.

You know, I think that's a question for readers to come to a conclusion on.

I don't know that I can...

place myself within a certain tradition.

I think that is something that, that readers will decide, but, um, I mean, that's, that's very generous of you to, to bring up.