Sakina's Kiss

An upper-middle class couple in Bangalore, Venkat and Viji, find their quiet life upended—and the flaws in their marriage exposed—when two strange young men come knocking at their door in the middle of the night, claiming to have business with their daughter, Rekha. Since Rekha, a college senior, happens to be away, visiting relatives in the countryside, Venkat sends the boys away—but they come back the next day, and this time they’re not alone. 

As Venkat begins to fear for his daughter’s safety, he is haunted by memories of similar, sinister events from his own youth, culminating in a betrayal and disappearance he’d prefer to forget. As his guilt-ridden imagination leaps between knowing and unknowing, evasion and confrontation, Shanbhag reveals not just the tensions in a marriage or a family, but also the polarization of Indian politics and the resurgence of the Hindu right.

Precise, enigmatic, and suspenseful, Sakina’s Kiss fulfills the promise of Vivek Shanbhag's lauded debut, Ghachar Ghochar, which Parul Sehgal called “A great Indian novel . . . elegant, lean, balletic” (The New York Times).

“Not since Kafka has a writer created such terror and tenderness on the same page. Vivek is probably the best writer writing in any language anywhere. If you read one book from India, read Sakina’s Kiss. If you want to read one novel from anywhere in the world, read Sakina’s Kiss.” 

—Mohammed Hanif

“What a gift to have an English translation of Shanbhag’s prose! We feel we  know the middle class family he describes; their joy, tensions, and contradictions are specific to them and yet are universal. A delightful read.”

—Abraham Verghese

“Vivek Shanbhag is one of those writers whose voice takes your breath away at the first encounter.”

—Yiyun Li

“Astonishingly truthful and marvelously playful, Sakina’s Kiss is an extraordinary novel.” 

—Megha Majumdar

“Shanbhag zeroes in on the growing cracks in an Indian family’s facade in this rich and stimulating novel . . . The past and present join to create a fascinating and intricate portrait of Venkat, which in turn encompasses the contentious political, gender, and class dynamics of contemporary India. Throughout, Shanbhag is a master of restraint, spinning a deceptively simple story that culminates in an exquisite final act. This one’s a knockout.

—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Sakina’s Kiss is a masterful meditation about an alienated protagonist baffled  by the liberalization of traditional culture and what it means to be a  modern man. Its universal themes are handled with the most delicate touch, woven  into a gripping tale spread over four days.” 

—Gabriel Byrne, actor and  author of Walking with Ghosts

“Vivek Shanbhag is a writer of rare and wonderful gifts.”

—Garth Greenwell

“With echoes of such unreliable narrators as John Dowell in Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier or Tony Webster in Julian Barnes’ Ford-inflected The Sense of an Ending, the strongest resemblance is to another novel — Damon Galgut’s Booker-winning The Promise. That story dealt, like this one, with the moral and psychological consequences over generations of a family’s failure to honour a promise. In each case, the promise in question is a plot of land. Shanbhag’s novel is subtle and ultimately devastating.”

—The Hindu

“Shanbhag addresses themes of patriarchy, family, parenthood and middle-class India in a subtly intense style that makes for a light read, but is profoundly insightful.”

—India Today 

“An apparently simple, gripping, good read . . . Venkat is much like Prufrock, a figure in the shadow of the looming war symbolising the existential angst of the indecisive and ineffectual man. A thriller from start to finish.”

—Mint 

“Ironic, fresh, dark and often wicked, Shanbhag’s sharp writerly eye delights in new comic and metaphoric opportunities. A shimmering kaleidoscope.”

—Deccan Herald

Vivek Shanbhag’s first translated novel, Ghachar Ghochar, was named a best book by The New York Times and the Guardian and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He lives in Bangalore.

Srinath Perur writes about science, travel, and books among other things and translates from Kannada to English. He is the author of the travelog If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai and the translator of This Life at Play and Ghachar Ghochar.

Sakina's Kiss • Paperback ISBN: 9781961341296

Jul 15, 2025 • McNALLY EDITIONS no. 40

5" x 8.5" • 192 pages • $19.00

eBook ISBN: 9781961341302