Book Event | €5 EventBrite 

October starts strong. We welcome Santanu Bhattacharya for a conversation about his novels, queer life and identity in India. Through his writing, Santanu Bhattacharya’s characters chronicle changing attitudes in India from religion to sexuality; from the personal to the political.

His standout 2023 debut, One Small Voice lives through the rise of Hindu nationalism in India in the form of a coming-of-age story. Winning Observer Best Debut Novel for 2023, this story marked him as an emerging novelist to watch in contemporary Indian fiction. In 2025, he followed this with Deviants, linking intergenerational stories of queer family members in India. Following the lives of these men reflects larger cultural shifts in views on queerness in India. Deviants is a powerful novel about the stories that ignite and inspire the next generation, and won the Rainbow Award and BLF-Atta Galata Prize 2025.

We’re honoured to invite him into the space on 1 October for an author conversation with Sharmaine Lovegrove about identity and how it relates to broader political structures in contemporary India. Expect conversation, reading, and signed copies to bring home to discover his myriad worlds for yourself.

About Santanu Bhattacharya:

Santanu Bhattacharya is the author of two novels, One Small Voice and Deviants. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Commonwealth Writers’ adda, the Daunt Books’ essay anthology Over The Water, the Verve Books’ anthology Queerphoria, and Token magazine. Santanu is the recipient of the Desmond Elliott Prize Residency, the Mo Siewcharran Prize, the Life Writing Prize, and a London Writers’ Award. He grew up in India, studied at the University of Oxford, and now lives in London.