HarperCollins Publishers India announces Onam in a Nightie Stories from a Kerala Quarantine by Anjana Menon
In India's tropical paradise, Kerala, stands a town wrapped around a giant roundabout, where a canny caretaker with a French connection holds sway. Vying for his attention are two competing neighbours. Appu holds lessons for the living but Maya cares only for the dead. And a gastronome dog plays ball girl to tennis-loving nuns.
At the centre is an imposing temple so ancient that no one knows exactly when it was built. Here, even a tiny railway station has set its own rules for acceptance. On the other side of the tracks a baker runs errands for total strangers in the middle of a pandemic.
The fictional town of Malgudi meets reality in the search for joy and belonging, in a book that is alternatively heart-warming and hilarious.
Anjana Menon's Onam in a Nightie takes you to a place that you wish stays the way it is forever, in these true stories of hope and resilience from a midway Kerala town.
"When life slows down, everything becomes magnified and strings you along to reveal how the ordinary stuff is extraordinary and compelling. This book is set in Kerala but it is also about what makes us human." –Anjana Menon, Author
"A remarkable book of joy and wonder packaged in pacy writing, yet one which will inspire you to slow down and look up – and find magic in the mundane." – Suchismita Ukil, Senior Editor-HarperCollins India
About the Author:
Anjana Menon has been wrestling with words for as long as she can remember. After studying literature, she got sucked into a journalism career that took her to Southeast Asia and Europe with Bloomberg News. She returned to India as one of the founder-editors of the business newspaper Mint and then ran a television newsroom before setting up her own content strategy consultancy. She is a co-author of What's Your Story? The Essential Business Storytelling Handbook. A columnist who thought she would grow up to be an artist, she likes people more than gadgets, dogs even more than people and slow life over hurried living. Anjana divides her time between Delhi and London, wishing instead to be in Kyoto, knowing fully well the foolishness of her desires. This is her debut creative non-fiction book.
