“The years I spent editing helped me hone my own writing as well…”-Aruna Nambiar (Indian Author)

Team Kitaab is in conversation with Indian author Aruna Nambiar as a part of the South Asian Women Writers Feature.

For the whole of March, we will be featuring South Asian Women Writers on Kitaab for the whole of March. You can read the editor’s note to know more about this.

Today, we are featuring Aruna Nambiar – an Indian author who wears multiple hats with equal elan. She has written across genres with powerful stories and intriguing characters.

In a previous life, Aruna Nambiar was a student of engineering and management and a banker. Now a writer and editor, she writes tongue-in-cheek novels about life, relationships, and the idiosyncrasies of Indian society.

Her latest novel, The Weird Women’s Club, is a witty, irreverent tale about reclaiming life after loss, dealing with society’s scrutiny as a woman, and finding comfort and camaraderie in one’s own peculiar sisterhood. The novel playfully challenges society’s outmoded beliefs about women’s lives and identities.

She is also the author of The Monsters Still Lurk, a funny, moving saga of family and aging that unfolds against the backdrop of a quarter century of post-liberalization India, and Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth, part coming-of-age story, part social satire and part comedy of errors, set in 1980s Kerala.

Her recent short fiction includes two ebooks of comic stories, Lalita Kothandapani and the Heinous Crime, and Gender Bender. Her short fiction has been featured in the anthologies Jest Like That, Curtains and Winners Vol 1 as well, and her travel writing in The Itinerant Indian. She has also written for the coffee table book, Portrait Kerala, and edited for several publishing houses including Penguin India and Westland Books.