PRESS RELEASE: Crossword Award-winning author Payal Kapadia returns with a gripping new fantasy adventure, 'Woebegone's Warehouse of Words'

PRESS RELEASE

Crossword Award winning author Payal Kapadia

returns with a gripping new fantasy adventure

WOEBEGONE’S WAREHOUSE OF WORDS

11 July 2024, New Delhi:

Hachette India is thrilled to announce the highly anticipated return of Crossword Award-winning author Payal Kapadia with Woebegone’s Warehouse of Words, a spellbinding fantasy adventure that captures the zeitgeist of our times: where language is commodified. Words come at a price, and so does the freedom to speak them.

In prose both eloquent and spare, Kapadia melds fantasy and magical realism to voice the most urgent – and scorching – questions of our times. How do we think, feel, imagine, or remember when the words are missing? In a toss-up between freedom and survival, what wins? And in a world where lies shape-shift as the truth, of what value is a story? This ambitious and elaborately plotted book is scheduled to be released on 19 July 2024 in paperback, followed by a stunning limited hardback edition.

Looking forward to the release, Payal Kapadia says: ‘This started out as a tiny book about a world in which the words are fading. But then I started thinking about the Speakers. All around me, I began to find those who don’t have the freedom to tell their own stories. And suddenly, my story grew wings. I saw, with a terrifying exhilaration, that this was a book about our own world. I hope that readers of all ages will find these echoes in my book, and that the flesh-and-ink Words of the warehouse will make us connect more deeply with our words, and with each other.’

‘This book is wildly inventive, grand in its sweep, deep in its reach, dark and yet possessed of a defiant, luminous heart,’ says Vatsala Kaul Banerjee, Publisher –Children’s and Young Adult Books at Hachette India. ‘Payal Kapadia has created an immersive and astonishingly real universe around that very important thing that sets us apart as human – words.’

THE BOOK

Six desperate Words.

Two fearless Speakers.

One audacious quest to reclaim the truth,

if such a thing can still be found.

In a world where you must pay a price to speak, Speakers have to buy words to use them. At the click of a button, the flesh-and-ink Words at a warehouse are boxed and shipped to stay alive.

Everything changes when fifteen-year-olds Asha and Zeb break the rules and graffiti a wall. They collide head-on with the tyrannical Word Bloc and its sinister leader Gunther Glib. For him, power is about controlling what can be said, even if it means destroying the Words and forever silencing their Speakers.

In a losing battle, a dying Word urges her friends to escape to the forgotten Wood the Words first came from. As the paths of the Words and their Speakers intersect, they embark on an epic journey to fight a brutal regime and find what they stand for.

A startling, scorching blaze of an adventure from Crossword Award–winning author Payal Kapadia, Woebegone’s Warehouse of Words is a compelling cry for the freedom of speakers, and their words.

THE AUTHOR

Payal Kapadia studied English Literature at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, before earning an M.Sc. (Journalism) from Northwestern University, Chicago. Her debut novella Wisha Wozzariter won the 2013 Crossword Book Award for Children’s Writing and is in the 101 Indian Children’s Books We Love! compilation.

Her other books include the well-loved and widely read Horrid High series; Colonel Hathi Loses His Brigade (Disney); Puffin Lives: B.R. Ambedkar; and Twice Upon a Time (Puffin), which made it to the Parag Honour List. Her adult book Maidless in Mumbai (Bloomsbury) was Top Pick on Amazon.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

‘The Hunger Games meet Fahrenheit 451… This gripping odyssey about the power of words underscores the importance of free speech in a chilling dystopian world. Bold, lyrical and fast-paced, this is a must-read for fans of science fiction and speculative fiction.’

— Soman Chainani, author, The School for Good and Evil

‘Dystopian reality fiction – has Payal Kapadia just created a whole new genre? This book is a thing of beauty and will hold true forever. Deeply political, frighteningly relevant.’

— Paro Anand, author and winner of the Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puraskar

‘A tale of now, of our always-on age of Google-paedia, where the past is being constantly revised.’

— Adrian Levy, Emmy Award–winning journalist and author

‘Audacious! Bold! Compelling! A powerful reminder that words and stories matter. A timely tale of freedom, courage and the joy of wordplay.’

— Bijal Vachharajani, author

‘Snatches of 1984 and echoes of The Dictionary of Lost Words. Fluid writing, winsome characters and meticulous world-building. This will make readers think long and hard about the possibilities.’

— Jane De Suza, author

Publisher: Hachette India

ISBN: 978-93-88322-74-4| Format: Paperback | Pages: 304 | Price: INR 399