Radhika Swarup

Writer. Where the River Parts (2016) | Civil Lines (2021) | The New New Delhi Book Club (2024)

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

Can't wait for this book to finally be out in the world after what has felt like an interminable wait. Thank you, Westland Books, for your patience and for the love you have shown to the quirky, impossible, and all too relatable inhabitants of the New New Delhi Book Club.

[Westland Books @WestlandBooks]

As the pandemic brings India to a halt, a little girl stuck indoors persuades her old neighbour to set up a book club. Thus begin @rdswarup's heartwarming stories of warmth, community, heartbreak and above all, the healing power of hope.
Preorder on https://t.co/k8vYEbqkdl

[Arthur Schopenhauer @SchopenhauerNow]

What is life?
• Dostoevsky: It’s hell.
• Socrates: It’s a test.
• Aristotle: It’s the mind.
• Nietzsche: It’s power.
• Freud: It’s death.
• Marx: It’s the idea.
• Picasso: It’s art.
• Gandhi: It’s love.
• Schopenhauer: It’s suffering.
• Bertrand Russell: It’s competition.
• Steve Jobs: It’s faith.
• Einstein: It’s knowledge.
• Stephen Hawking: It’s hope.
• Kafka: It’s just the beginning.

[Dr. Ezzideen @ezzingaza]

Today she came. Pale. Trembling. A young woman no older than twenty-five, clutching in her arms her son, her last living fragment of hope. The boy was limp, his little arms hanging as though life itself had slipped from them. His eyes were two dead stars. Behind her walked the grandmother. A grandmother who had already buried too many. Her face so worn that it seemed older than the land itself, older than grief.

The mother spoke haltingly, every word torn from her throat like a piece of flesh.
“Diarrhea. Five days,” she whispered, as if naming an unforgivable sin.
“But what frightens me…” Her voice cracked. “He no longer eats.”

“Since when?” I asked, though I was afraid to know.

Ah, that silence. That silence was like a bell tolling for the dead. She looked at her mother, as though asking for permission to speak. Then, with a kind of resigned despair, she confessed: “For a long time.”

I gave her medicine. A hollow gesture. A lie we tell ourselves so we do not collapse. She left without a word. But the grandmother stayed.

She came closer. Each step was heavy, as if she were carrying not her own body but the body of every mother who ever lived. She leaned toward me and spoke with the voice of someone who has seen hell.
“Do not ask her,” she said. “She cannot say it. The child stopped eating on the day he saw his father fall. He saw the blood. He saw the body. He saw everything.”

Then she too left, and I was alone with the weight of the world.

I am no psychologist. But I have seen the abyss in men’s hearts, and I know what it means when a child refuses life itself. This is not a disease of the stomach. This is the soul crying out: No more.

Tell me, what happens to a child’s mind when the first god he ever knew, his father, is struck down before him? What happens when the one who was meant to shield him from death becomes death?

The father’s blood was not the only thing spilled that day. The child’s faith was spilled with it. The world collapsed for him. There is no food sweet enough to make him want to taste life again.

And this is the deepest cruelty of genocide. It is not the heap of corpses that marks its victory. It is not the smoking ruins. It is not the screams at night. Its triumph is when a living child sits in the dust and refuses the breast, refuses the bread, refuses the world itself.

This child will grow, if he grows, with a hollow inside him no bread will ever fill. No embrace will ever close. He will learn to love with fear, to sleep with ghosts beside him. And one day, when he becomes a father, he will place into his child’s hands not only his love but also his terror.

And this is how extermination stretches its fingers into the future. It kills not only the body but the capacity to live.

Gaza is not merely a place under bombs. It is a factory of grief, a workshop of despair. What is being forged here is not just ruin. It is a generation of children who will one day walk the earth carrying death in their memories, in their dreams, in the way they touch the world.

As I write this, my chest burns. My hands tremble. I feel as though my own heart is being gnawed from the inside by rats. If there is a God, and I dare still to believe, then He must be weeping over Gaza tonight.

Yes, the father was killed. But the greater crime, the eternal crime, is this: the slow, unseen murder of the child’s soul.

This is our apocalypse. Not fire from heaven. Not angels with trumpets. But a child sitting in the rubble, lips pressed shut, eyes empty, refusing to swallow the world’s cruelty.

#GazaGenocide

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

@sayantansunnyg Many congratulations!

[Commonwealth Foundation Creatives @cwfcreatives]

Celebrate #WorldHealthDay with Remember to Rest.
This groundbreaking collection asks powerful questions about our collective health that will move and inspire you.
It features more than 25 writers from across the world.
Which is your favourite? Read now 👇
https://t.co/Ude1qzAiUv

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

What a very, very generous review of The New New Delhi Book Club. It's write ups like this that make the vagaries of the writer's life worth it.
@WestlandBooks

[N (She / Her) @PrivyTrifles]

Book Review: The New New Delhi Book Club by Radhika Swarup

https://t.co/0wwHCrHJTp

[N (She / Her) @PrivyTrifles]

Interviewed author Radhika Swarup

"It is only as The New New Delhi Book Club was published that I saw that there was a distinct thread linking all my apparently disparate works. " Radhika Swarup (Author- The New New Delhi Book Club)

https://t.co/nX181ozVVI

[Westland Books @WestlandBooks]

If books be the food of love, read on!

Looking for last minute recommendations? We have curated these reads that you can gift your partner for #ValentinesDay !

[Amb Rajiv Dogra @AmbRajivDogra]

"for as much as pandemic took from us...it brought great victories too...so many triumphs of human spirit, of large-heartedness, resilience & creativity – were all human" says @rdswarup about her book
@TOI_Books, @WestlandBooks

https://t.co/sFQS1sYZ73

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

Couldn't have done it without all of you @Westland.

@Sanghamitraa_ @karthikavk

[Aatreyee @aatreyee2]

The warmest, kindest and funny @rdswarup and her 'warm soup on a cold night' book The New New Delhi Book Club is on the longlist and of course we can't keep calm!

[Westland Books @WestlandBooks]

We are so excited to see three of our books on the @Blf2025 longlists for fiction and translations.

Congratulations @rdswarup @ManojRupda #VRamaswamy #HansdaSowvendraShekhar

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

@aatreyee2 You've got this, you multitasking marvel!

[Westland Books @WestlandBooks]

Read this beautiful review of The New New Delhi Book Club by @CNBCTV18News.

The New New Delhi Book Club is now available in bookstores and online.

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

What a warm review to wake up to on a cold January morning! Thanks to Ann @literatewanderer for the love for #TheNewNewDwlhiBookClub.

⁦@WestlandBooks⁩ #books #tbr https://t.co/UK3g3m54oq

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

@RaiSwatiRai @WestlandBooks Hope you enjoy it :).

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

So glad you enjoyed it, Paul, and felt the warmth of The New New Delhi Book Club just as the weather turns so inhospitable.

Working with the @WestlandBooks team has been a dream.

[Paul Waters @PaulWaters99]

In praise of book cover artists & designers. The cheery, beautiful & just right cover of The New New Delhi Book Club by Radhika Swarup @rdswarup - I really enjoyed the book inside the cover too. Buy it in India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives or Nepal.

[Westland Books @WestlandBooks]

Cold day essentials!
Have you signed up for #TheNewNewDelhiBookClub yet?
Get your copy at your favourite bookstore or online.

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

What a wonderful, engaging evening that was in a warm and welcoming #Nagpur. My thanks to @FoundationPK, particularly as winter draws in elsewhere!

[Prabha Khaitan Foundation @FoundationPK]

#Nagpur hosted a lively evening of thought-provoking discussions during #TheWriteCircle with author Radhika Swarup. Monica Bhagwagar, Ehsaas Woman of Nagpur, engaged in an insightful conversation with the author, exploring her personal, professional and literary journey and perspectives.

Priyanka Kothari, Ehsaas woman of Nagpur, delivered the welcome address and the vote of thanks, while Rahul Tajne of Radisson Blu felicitated the guest author. Supported by Ehsaas Women of Nagpur, with Radisson Blu Hotel Nagpur as the hospitality partner and Lokmat as the print media partner, the event was a memorable celebration of literature and dialogue!

To watch the complete session, click here - https://t.co/hDjoTXhw3O

@rdswarup #monicabhagwagar @ParveenTuli1 @JyotiKa11606970 @PIYAGK @lokmat @RadissonBlu @ehsaaswomen

[Westland Books @WestlandBooks]

Cold days deserve some warm stories! ☕️🍩
Get yourself a copy of @rdswarup's The New New Delhi Book Club from your favourite bookstore or online.

#WINTER

[Radhika Swarup @rdswarup]

@PaulWaters99 @faqirchandbooks @CCriadoPerez @PenguinIndia @Bahrisons_books @bedsqpublishers @BrooDoherty @DHHlitagency @VaseemKhanUK @AwaisKhanAuthor @aforauthors @SimonSchusterIN @anniezaidi @AlephBookCo @mayabhushan @speakingtiger14 @Rupa_Books @hema_sukumar @WestlandBooks @CoronetBooks @Diana_Beaumont Hope you enjoy The New New Delhi Book Club, and how I envy you your Khan market afternoon in the dying days of the year!