When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018

LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2018

A BEST BOOK OF 2017
Financial Times
The Guardian
The Daily Telegraph
The Observer

“Meena Kandasamy’s vivid, sharp and precise writing makes a triumph of When I Hit You.”—The Guardian

Set in modern India, the unnamed narrator falls in love with a university professor and agrees to be his wife. Based on the author’s own experience of marriage, soon the newly-wed experiences extreme violence at her husband’s hands and finds herself socially isolated. Intellectual and physical cruelty is explored. Yet hope keeps her alive. Writing becomes her salvation, a supreme act of defiance and, as the subtitle suggests, the novel is also about the act of writing itself and the way that fiction and stories can help you escape.

Though a harrowing story, Kandasamy’s writing is also funny, tender, and lyrical. When I Hit You is smart, fierce, and courageous.

Meena Kandasamy is a poet, fiction writer, translator, and activist who lives in Chennai and London. She has published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms. Militancy, and the critically acclaimed novel, The Gypsy Goddess. This is her second novel.