“The Pretenders is born of that rage, an attempt to make sense of a time that defied logic. It is maximalist where Into the Forest was almost minimalist. ” Avtar Singh (Author-The Pretenders)
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Team Kitaab is in conversation with Avtar Singh, author of The Pretenders (Simon & Schuster India, 2025).
Avtar Singh is a writer, editor, and storyteller. His last novel, Into the Forest was published by Context/Westland in 2024. Set in a German forest during Covid, it is about a group of women from very different backgrounds, three disappearances, and at least one murder.
Necropolis (2014) is set in Delhi and is about crime, poetry, and a woman who may be hundreds of years old. It is available from HarperCollins/Akashic Books. It is translated in German as Nekropolis, by Unionsverlag.
His first novel, The Beauty of These Present Things, set in one day in Mumbai, was published in 2000 by Penguin India. His short fiction has been anthologised in The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction, Mumbai Noir, and Civil Lines, and has been published in Prairie Schooner, Subnivean, Tehelka, and other places.
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