A Bad Character

The title character of Deepti Kapoors searing debut is dead by Line 1, but I still read A Bad Character in one frantic sitting... Intoxicating. -- Catherine Lacey * New York Times * A stylishly written, powerfully moving love story, set against the bleak beauty and baroque decay of 21st century Delhi - its rubble, construction sites, wastelands, and the poisoned ooze of its dead river. What Twilight in Delhi is to the twentieth-century Indian novel, A Bad Character is to the twenty-first: the essence of Indias corrupt capital, brilliantly and darkly distilled. This is a remarkable debut from a major new talent. -- William Dalrymple, author of The Last Mughal Twenty-first-century Delhi needed a voice, and here it is, in all its dark majesty. A Bad Character comes as if from nowhere: it is an alchemical marvel, a novel of stunning beauty and originality. -- Rana Dasgupta A Bad Charactercaptures [Delhi] in such perfect detail that I felt I could smell the food stalls, feel the crush of people and the heat rising from the pavements... As well as her transcendent eye for detail, the love story at the heart of this book is honest and deeply unsettling, making it a compelling read. -- Kerry Hudson * Herald * A fiery, incandescent debut, A Bad Character artfully captures the fragmented psyche and perilous desires of a woman alone in New Delhi... [Kapoor's] writing has the flexible, lyrical cadence of a prose poem... A Bad Character is a powerful, psychologically acute, elegantly crafted debut that promises great things to come from Kapoor. -- Claire Fallon * Huffington Post *

Deepti Kapoor was born in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, and grew up in Bombay, Bahrain and Dehradun. In 1997 she went to the University of Delhi to study journalism and later completed an MA in Social Psychology. She spent the next decade working for various publications, driving around the city, finding stories and learning its streets. She now lives in Goa.