K.R. Meera started out as a journalist in 1998. She won a series of awards for her reportage till she quit to be a full-time writer of fiction in 2006. She has since published short stories, novels and essays, and has been recognized with some of the most prestigious prizes for literary writing in Malayalam including the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and the Odakkuzhal Award. She lives in Kottayam with her husband Dileep and daughter Shruthi.
A bilingual feminist scholar, J. Devika has translated Malayali women authors from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and contemporary writers like Sarah Joseph, Nalini Jameela, Anitha Thampi and V.M. Girija besides K.R. Meera.
'A contemporary classic' -Mint
The Grddha Mullick family bursts with marvellous tales of hangmen and hangings in which they figure as eyewitnesses to the momentous events that have shaped the history of the subcontinent. When twenty-two-year-old Chetna Grddha Mullick is appointed the first woman executioner in India, assistant and successor to her father, her life explodes under the harsh lights of television cameras. When the day of the execution arrives, will she bring herself to take a life?
Meera's spectacular imagination turns the story of Chetna's life into an epic and perverse coming-of-age tale. The lurid pleasures of voyeurism and the punishing ironies of violence are kept in agile balance as the drama hurtles to its inevitable climax.
'Meera weaves history, romance and the politics of the present together into a narrative of incredible complexity' -Caravan
