Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors

'A sparkling debut, full of tenderness and mischief. It's as if Roth and Narayan had a baby' - Aatish Taseer

It is a day of triumph for Appa and Amma, who have driven home a shiny new Honda Civic to show off to their neighbours in Blue Hills housing colony. But their eldest son Sreenath is behaving strangely, and his younger brother soon finds out why: a clip of Sreenath and his girlfriend Anita has been posted to a porn site, and is gaining traction.

When the news breaks, their parents' anxiously acquired status is shattered, and the war between them becomes a viral story, emblematic of a wider generational fight. Our narrator must become a reluctant middleman, seduced by the freedoms his older brother and his friends point to, while desperate to restore the family unity.

Full of bittersweet comedy, and insight into contemporary Indian society and an online generation, this is a story about now with the feel of a classic.

Short-listed for Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2023 (UK)

'A sparkling debut, full of tenderness and mischief. It's as if Roth and Narayan had a baby' - Aatish Taseer, author of The Way Things Were

'Humorous, insightful and enormously touching . . . an exquisite debut' - Clare Allan, author of Poppy Shakespeare

Aravind Jayan lives in Bangalore in India. His writing has been published in Out of Print, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Helter Skelter's Anthology IV, and The Hindu, among others. He is the 2017 winner of the Toto Award for Fiction. He was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2021.

A scandalous video. A humiliated family. And a brother stuck in the middle... 'A sparkling debut, full of tenderness and mischief. It's as if Roth and Narayan had a baby' - Aatish Taseer It is a day of triumph for Appa and Amma, who have driven home a shiny new Honda Civic to show off to their neighbours in Blue Hills housing colony. But their eldest son Sreenath is behaving strangely, and his younger brother soon finds out why: a clip of Sreenath and his girlfriend Anita has been posted to a porn site, and is gaining traction. When the news breaks, their parents' anxiously acquired status is shattered, and the war between them becomes a viral story, emblematic of a wider generational fight. Our narrator must become a reluctant middleman, seduced by the freedoms his older brother and his friends point to, while desperate to restore the family unity. Full of bittersweet comedy, and insight into contemporary Indian society and an online generation, this is a story about now with the feel of a classic.

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