LAND OF THE WELL

'Raindrops speckled the pool. It looked diseased. The boy felt the bumps on his arms.' It is Goa in the monsoons. A shy and lonely teenager finds himself drawn towards a group of holidaymakers. In their midst is Momothe woman he would do anything to be close to. As if sensing his willingness the group spends the day 'testing' him beforepronouncing him worthy of their friendship and their disclosures about themselves. Challenged by his new-found friends to provide an answer to the riddle of their condition the boy tells them the story of the Land of the Well. Expecting praise and further acceptance he is horrified when the outcome is an alienation more extreme than he has ever faced before. A novel that examines this age of anxiety wherein the bodies of the young and successful break down in ways that mirror their innermost traumas Land of the Well walks the line between reality and delusion between treachery and trust. PRAISE FOR RUPTURE 'Pick up a debut novel from the Indian fiction section of your local bookstore and chances are you'll find a semi-autobiographicalcoming-of-age tale told in plain simple English. It's a relief then to find that SampurnaChattarji's Rupture is anything but that. This novel is intricately layered not confining itself to a specific character background or mode. The language too is coiled and charged-as befits one supposes a poet writing in prose' - Tehelka '[Rupture] is a dark tale ... compelling and hard to put down'- Deccan Herald