When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (Literature & Fiction)

When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife (Meena Kandasamy) is set up as one continuous listen: cover, runtime, and a chapter list on the same page.

Seduced by politics, poetry and an enduring dream of building a better world together, the unnamed narrator falls in love with a university professor. Moving with him to a rain-washed coastal town, she swiftly learns that what for her is a bond of love is for him a contract of ownership. As he sets about reducing her to his idealised version of an obedient wife, bullying her and devouring her ambition of being a writer in the process, she attempts to push back – a resistance he resolves to break with violence and rape. At once the chronicle of an abusive marriage and a celebration of the invincible power of art, When I Hit You is a smart, fierce and courageous take on traditional wedlock in modern India.

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