Neel Unnikrishnan has a real shot at winning the National Spelling Bee. This young Indian-American can crush tricky words like CHIAROSCURIST and AUTOCHTHONOUS, but life as a teenager is far more challenging. His mother expects nothing less than perfection and his father has his own secret bets riding on Neels success. Neel is laser-focused, but then enters Meher Khan - brilliant, unpredictable and impossible to ignore.Meher is Neels biggest rival, but also the one person who truly understands him. She gets under his skin and keeps him on his toes, yet he cant seem to stay away. As the competition heats up and family tensions rise, Neels world starts to slip away from his grip. Winning should be everything. So why does it suddenly feel like theres more at stake than just a trophy?Neel is about to learn that some words are easier to spell than to live by, and he must figure out what really matters before he gets BEE-WITCHED for good.
Product Details
Author:
Aruna Sankaranarayanan
Publisher:
Hachette
SKU:
BK0522525
EAN:
9789357319300
Number Of Pages:
288
Language:
English
Binding:
Paperback
Release date:
20 May 2025
About Author
Discover more of the authors books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more. A late-night encounter led to my first book. I was working as a quality consultant at a call center, and one of our tasks as consultants was to improve agent quality. This was a time when the BPO and call center industries were mushrooming in the city, and many young men and women from small towns and second-tier cities were flocking to Bangalore to service American customers. That night, a young man from Tumkur was acting out on the phone, transforming in my presence from Murugan to Michael, engaging in small talk with the American caller. Murugan was the son of a security guard, and I expected him to falter on the call, and to somehow reveal his small-town origins. Instead, he was flawless. When the American said that he was finally moving out of his parents home, Murugan-Michael said, Thats awesome, I know exactly what that feels like. In Murugans own life, his family had moved with him from Tumkur, and though he was to be married soon, he never intended to move out of his parents home ever. While I was floored by the flawless performance, I was beset by gnawing questions and a vague discomfort: What did such hyphenated identities do to Indian agents? Bangalore Calling was the outcome of that unease. Since then, Ive turned to writing full-time. For many years, Ive lived in gated spaces. Its a very convenient life for people from the middle and upper-middle class for one thing, you get a 24 by 7 supply of power and water, access to a host of amenities like a pool and a badminton court and you also feel like you belong to a community, which shields you from the alienation that many city-dwellers experience. As a writer, though, one always wrestles with disquiet about ones own life and then the mind starts wandering into what-if terrains. When you are part of a residents group thats griping about a plumbing or electrical problem, your imagination starts dwelling on scenarios that might be much worse. No Trespassing is the culmination of a mind meandering beyond the confines of a gated complex.
