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NEW DELHI, Oct. 4, 2024 -- HarperCollins looks forward to the forthcoming publication of the delightful fable for adults, The Rabbit & the Squirrel, in a new format and with a new design, releasing end October.

Now in its twentieth year, The Last Song of Dusk, which won Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi the Betty Trask Award in the UK as well as the Premio Grinzane Cavour in Italy, remains a novel beloved to a generation of Indians. HarperCollins India is delighted to welcome this novel along with the author's other acclaimed books – the novel The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay and the fable The Rabbit & the Squirrel, to new life. Also available from HarperCollins India is Loss, Shanghvi's moving meditation on grief. Redesigned for a younger peerage of readers, this quartet – with timeless themes of love and longing, sex and gender, and written in an abundant, playful love for language – will be available in August-September 2024.

Udayan Mitra, Executive Publisher, HarperCollins said: "Many a reader, like me, will have indelible memories of the first time they encountered The Last Song of Dusk, and immersed themselves in its magical world conjured up by words. Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi is one of the most powerful and accomplished writers of our times, and after The Last Song of Dusk – which is celebrating twenty years of publication – we have been fortunate to have The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, The Rabbit & the Squirrel, and Loss: Essays. It is a matter of pride and joy for us at HarperCollins to be able to bring all four books to readers now, with new covers for the two novels and a new design for the fable. We hope that new readers alongside those who are familiar with his work will pick these books up and rediscover the wonders of Shanghvi's writing."

Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi said: "I am thrilled to be published by HarperCollins, and especially by Udayan Mitra, who edited my first book of essays – Loss – in 2020. Even at the height of the pandemic, Udayan made space for Loss with such grace and enterprise that it was only natural to bring my other books to HarperCollins. And I feel so lucky that my books have soulful new covers created by the brilliant Bonita Shimray and Mallika Nanda."

The Last Song of Dusk (first published 2004)

Winner, Betty Trask Award, Premio Grinzane Cavour, nominated for the IMPAC Prize

'A magical piece of storytelling.' – Sunday Times

Paperback| 392 pp | INR 499

After Anuradha and Vardhmaan's fairytale marriage is interrupted when their young son dies in a tragic accident, they try to rebuild their devastated lives in an old house by the sea. In this history-soaked mansion in 1940s Bombay, the couple is joined by Anuradha's niece, Nandini, a dazzling young artist with cat's blood running in her veins. As Nandini daringly takes on Bombay's art scene, the couple works to save their marriage, eventually discovering that real love, as unpredictable as it is nourishing, is given and received in silence. Witty, perceptive and sad by turns, The Last Song of Dusk has endeared itself to a generation of readers with its wild charm and deep heart.

The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay (first published 2009)

Shortlisted, Man Asian Literary Prize

'A triumph.' – Amy Tan

Paperback | 496 pp | INR 599

Young photographer Karan Seth comes to Bombay to document the city of his dreams, but the heartless killing of a friend draws him into a Fitzgeraldian world of sex, crime and politics. After the botched murder trial and a failed love affair, Karan moves to England to recover. But much like the flamingoes of Sewri, drawn by Bombay's magnetic pull, Karan too must return to the old city and to old loves. The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay pays homage to a murder trial that riveted modern India while exposing the fault lines in its society, in a story that is as much about love's betrayals as it is about friendship and its secret redemptions.

The Rabbit & the Squirrel (first published 2018)

Illustrations by Stina Wirsen

'An instant classic.' – Hindustan Times

The Squirrel's greatest joy is dancing in the forest with the Rabbit – her beloved friend and equal of heart. While the duo is inseparable, fate has other ideas: the feisty Squirrel is forcibly married to a wealthy boar and the solitary Rabbit enlists in a monastery. Years later, a brief, tragic reunion finds them both transformed by personal defeats. And yet, to each other, they are unchanged, and their private world – where sorrow registered as rapture and wit concealed loss – is just how they had left it.

A story of thwarted love, and an ode to the enduring pleasures of friendship, The Rabbit & the Squirrel is a charmed fable for grown-ups, in which one life, against all odds, is fated for the other.

Loss: Essays (first published 2020)

Available Now

'The honesty, wisdom and pain of this writing add up to something very important: truth.' – Salman Rushdie

What does it mean to lose someone? To answer this timeless question, bestselling author Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi draws on a string of devastating personal losses – of his mother, of his father and of a beloved pet – to craft a moving memoir of death and grief. With surgical detachment and subtle feeling, Shanghvi charts the landscape of bereavement as he takes the reader down the dark, winding path to healing. Clear-eyed and intimate, Loss is the first volume of non-fiction by one of India's most beloved writers of life experience.

About the Author

Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi's first novel, The Last Song of Dusk, won the Betty Trask Award in the UK and the Premio Grinzane Cavour in Italy, and was nominated for the IMPAC Prize in Ireland. His second book, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay, was shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize. The Rabbit & the Squirrel, with illustrations by Stina Wirsen, and Loss, essays on death and grief, are published by HarperCollins India as well. Shanghvi works and lives in a village in north Goa.

About HarperCollins India

HarperCollins is celebrating its 31st anniversary this year, having begun publishing in India in 1992. HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live! Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Harvard University Press, Gallup Press, Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet. HarperCollins India has won the Publisher of the Year Award four times at Tata Literature Live! in 2022, 2021, 2018 and 2016, and at Publishing Next in 2021 & 2015. HarperCollins India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers.

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