The Literary Mirror

Sarin's novel follows Meenal, a Delhi speechwriter who has ghostwritten a minister's public voice for eleven years, through the one week she is asked to write under her own name — and discovers how much of her value depended on nobody knowing which words were hers.

The political detail is precise without becoming a roman à clef; Sarin is more interested in the mechanics of authorship than in scoring points against any real figure, and the novel is better for keeping its targets generic.

Where it stumbles is a late romantic subplot that feels bolted on to satisfy a marketing brief rather than the book's own logic. Cut that thread and The Understudy of Rajpath would be a tighter, better novel; even with it, it is a sharp one.

“Sarin's satire is sharpest on the difference between writing power and holding it.”