Our narrator is “twenty and untouched” when her mother dies. Sent by her absentee father to live with a relative in a modest New Delhi apartment, she is ill-equipped to resist the allure of the rich and rebellious young man who approaches her one day at a cafe. He is a few years older, and from a different social class, but they both yearn to break free of tradition. As they drive around Delhi—eating, making love, falling apart—he introduces her to an India that she never knew existed, and will never be able to forget.
 
Told in a voice at once gritty and lyrical, A Bad Character is an astounding book, an intimate and raw exploration of female transformation in contemporary India, and an unforgettable hymn to a dangerous, exhilarating city.