MAHESH RAO is the author of
The Smoke Is Rising, which won the Tata First Book Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Crossword Award. His second book,
One Point Two Billion, is a collection of short stories.
Bored witless in her south Delhi cocoon, the beautiful Ania Khurana seeks excitement. Whether tinkering with her novel-in-progress or setting up her single aunt and close friends with suitable men, she undertakes her projects with a passionate focus. Art fairs, literary residencies, a weekend at a cricketer-turned-politician's country retreat and, of course, dozens of glittering parties-Ania applies her exceptional industry to them all. But her privilege cannot mask the darkness and vulnerability at the heart of her ornate world-nor does it enable her to influence the dazzling, deadly men and women who appear in it.
Keenly observed, sharply plotted and full of wit and brio, Polite Society reimagines Jane Austen's Emma in contemporary Delhi to portray a society whose polished surface often reveals far more than is intended.
'Witty, smart, compelling''A fine and funny novel . . . Rao has a great eye for absurd detail and a sensitive ear for what's not said.
Polite Society is anything but polite''Imagine
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, only funnier (and more terrifying thanks to all the Delhi socialites)''Here is an utterly gripping, beautifully narrated and refreshingly inventive tale about India.
Polite Society is not just a luminous work of art, it's a masterwork that tells you why Rao is such an important raconteur of our time''An unputdownable jewel of a novel by a writer of astonishing talent''Rao's writing sneaks up on you. It's quiet, funny, warm. This book is about societal mores and power but it is also about angst and the unsaid'
