Hot Water

It has always been Mira, Ma and Ashu. The three of them-as they sing Simon & Garfunkel in Ma''s sun-yellow car, watch TV on the sofa and holiday on the mango farm-are bound firmly together. Yet, beneath this tale of proximity, lurks another story-that of a family in hot water. Nine-year-old Mira, fourteen-year-old Ashu and Ma harbour secrets. All of them confront questions that have no neat answers. Where is Ma''s husband, for instance? Who does Ashu pine for? Why is Mira on the alert? One long, hot summer, the secrets come tumbling out. And the world Ma, Mira and Ashu have cobbled together threatens to give way. An achingly beautiful novel, Hot Water traces the ways in which the love we feel for one another can both make and wreck us.

Autorentext

Bhavika Govil was born in New Delhi and dreams of the sea. Her debut novel Hot Water is forthcoming with Jacaranda Books in the UK and was published by HarperCollins India in the Indian subcontinent in April 2025. It was a Vogue India 2025 book recommendation, and was featured on The Asian Age bestsellers list. The novel is being translated into French by Éditions de La Martinière in 2026.

Hot Water has already been longlisted for the 2025 Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman awards in India for the Best Debut category, and a portion of manuscript-in-progress won the 2021 Pontas & JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 David Higham Agency New Writers' Open Week.

Bhavika's short fiction is forthcoming in Granta, and has been published in Wasafiri, Extra Teeth, Gutter, and anthologies such as A Case of Indian Marvels: Dazzling Stories by the Country's Finest Young Writers, and 100 Indian Stories, amongst others. She has also won the 2019 Bound Short Story Prize, been shortlisted for the 2021 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize, been longlisted for the TFA Awards for Creative Writing in English 2021-23, and been mentioned as a notable contender for the 2020 Bristol Short Story Prize. Bhavika holds a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh. When she isn't writing, she teaches creative writing workshops online and in person.