Preview
  • Small Deaths

  • A Novel
  • By: Rijula Das
  • Narrated by: Deepa Samuel
  • Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
  • 3.7 out of 5 stars (11 ratings)

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Small Deaths

By: Rijula Das
Narrated by: Deepa Samuel
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Publisher's summary

A staggering debut novel of murder, loyalty, love, and survival at all costs, set in the teeming underbelly of Calcutta’s most infamous neighborhood.

In Calcutta’s notorious red-light district, Lalee aspires to a better life. Her unfailingly loyal client Tilu Shau has dreams too. A heady romantic and marginal novelist, Tilu is in love with the indifferent Lalee and wants to liberate her from her street life with marriage. But when a fellow sex worker and young mother is brutally murdered, the solicitous madam of the Blue Lotus invites Lalee to take the woman’s place “upstairs” as a high-end escort. The offer comes with the promise of a more lucrative life but quickly spirals into violence, corruption, and unfathomable secrets that threaten to upset the fragile stability of Lalee’s very existence. As Tilu is drawn deeper into his rescue mission, he and Lalee embark on life-altering journeys to escape a savage fate.

As much a page-turner as it is poignant, Small Deaths is a brilliantly drawn modern noir that exposes the reality of society’s preyed-upon outcasts, their fierce resilience, and the dangerous impediments that stand in the way of their dignity, love, and survival.

Revised edition: Previously published as A Death in Shonagachhi, this edition of Small Deaths includes editorial revisions.

©2022 Rijula Das (P)2022 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
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Critic reviews

“[Rijula] Das’s searing debut centers on the plight of sex workers in contemporary Calcutta, India…This devastating novel is in turn touching and painful to read. Das, a Bengali-to-English translator, is definitely a writer to watch.”Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A deeply human portrait…bitterly cynical, surprisingly humorous, and astonishingly beautiful.”CrimeReads

“Rijula Das has evaded the prevalent tropes of writing. It is very difficult to pin down the genre she is writing in—is it a love story, for instance; is it a murder mystery; is it a novel about social justice? The book gives light to the popular and wrong notion that literature needs to necessarily be heavy. It manages to achieve everything that good literature does while at the same time being entertaining. It is full of beautiful humorous touches and outstanding at zooming in to details.”—Judges of the JCB Prize for Literature 2021

What listeners say about Small Deaths

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