Tarun Tejpal, founder of Tehelka—India’s leading political magazine, guides us through the corridors of power and into the belly of India’s forgotten underclass in his novel The Story of My Assassins. Recently released in the United States, The Story of My Assassins follows a journalist’s investigation into the plot of his own attempted murder. The protagonist delves into the lives of his would-be hitmen; incidentally, each falls along India’s fault lines of conflict  (Publishers Weekly). The novel is inspired by Tejpal’s real-life death threats, received after famously reporting on a corruption scandal that would lead to the resignation of India’s defense minister. As India’s economy burgeons through lax regulations and foreign investments, Tarun Tejpal takes a scathing step back to remind readers that modern India is still brimming with inconsistencies and contradictions. Celebrated essayist Katherine Boo writes of the novel, “Deeply humane, raucously funny, dizzy with social and psychological insight! A masterful account of 21st-century ambition, inequality, and power from one of India’s most fearless writers.”

Editor of Delhi Noir, Hirsh Sawhney, will moderate the event. Delhi Noir tells the sordid and discrepant tales of India’s capital, written by fourteen of India’s veteran authors. Accounts of illicit male prostitution, yuppie drug addicts, vigilante rickshaw drivers, and soulless corporate dons fill the pages of this acclaimed anthology.

Sample an excerpt from The Story of My Assassins on The Margins.

*This event is presented by Melville House.

Tarun Tejpal is a journalist, publisher, novelist, and founder of India’s leading news magazine, Tehelka. He has been named one of India’s most influential people by The Guardian, Businessweek, and Asiaweek. A celebrated literary novelist as well as journalist, his fiction has been awarded France’s Prix Mille Pages and was a finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize. His debut novel, The Alchemy of Desire, was hailed by V.S. Naipaul as “a new and brilliantly original novel from India.”

Hirsh Sawhney is the editor of Delhi Noir, a critically-acclaimed anthology published by Akashic Books and HarperIndia. His writing has appeared in various periodicals, including The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and Tehelka. He teaches at Brooklyn College and is completing his first novel.