The Bandit Queens
In a small village in rural Gujarat, Geeta is the woman everyone suspects of having murdered her husband, who disappeared five years ago, because it is easier to believe she killed him than to admit he simply left her. Geeta runs a small jewelry business through a microfinance loan group, keeps to herself, and is content to let the rumor do her social work for her, until Farah, a fellow loan-group member with a violent husband, arrives one evening to ask for the village Churel's help in making her own husband disappear. One reluctant favor turns into a growing, rickety, darkly funny conspiracy among the women of the loan group. Parini Shroff's 2023 debut is a pitch-black comedy about female friendship, caste, debt, and the economics of domestic violence.
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The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Geeta's husband walked out of their Gujarat village five years ago, and the village decided she killed him. As the rumor settles, the other wives come asking her, with money in hand, to help them with their own bad husbands.
Yes. The Bandit Queens won the Reese's Book Club YA Book of the Year and was a finalist for several other major awards. It was Parini Shroff's debut novel.
Yes. The Bandit Queens blends literary fiction with dark comedy, set in rural Indian villages where women in self-help microfinance groups stumble into a side business arranging the deaths of abusive husbands.
The Bandit Queens was written by Parini Shroff, published in 2023 by Atlantic Books, Limited.
The Bandit Queens is a standalone novel by Parini Shroff, not part of a series.
The Bandit Queens is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.