2025 is off to a great start! Debut Indian novelist Rupleena Bose has joined the Pontas Agency, with her novel Summer of Then, which was published by Vintage Books/PRH India in May 2024.
The critical reception in India has been exceptional with praise from such authors as Ruchir Joshi and Prayaag Akbar, and the novel was selected for Platform magazine's "Debut Books to Watch Out For" and The Telegraph's summer reading list amongst others. World English rights (excluding Indian subcontinent) and all translation and audiovisual rights are currently available.
Summer of Then employs a sparse yet deeply compelling voice and introspective, observational commentary to evoke precise emotional and social detail. The novel follows a young English literature teacher negotiates between her writing and her livelihood, her morality and her heart, her selfhood and her family’s history. She moves between cities, seasons and two men: Nikhil and Zafar—their lives getting entangled across a decade of restlessness and upheavals, their paths defined by questions of identity, desire and betrayals.
It is a debut novel that relishes the interiority of women, especially the often-unsettling intimacies of relationships—sexual, romantic and platonic—against the trauma of sexual assault and harassment. Set across Calcutta, Delhi, Mumbai and Edinburgh, Scotland, this coming-of-age novel crosses paths with the India of the 2010s, exploring the trickle-down effect of politics on the academia and college life in Indian metropolitan cities, leading us just to the point of the incipient anxieties and beginnings of the 2020 pandemic.
Praise for Summer of Then:
“Urgent, resonant, a powerful debut that examines the traumas and triumphs of youth and a fast-fading past.” Prayaag Akbar, author of Leila
“There are times when one’s words threaten to burst out of oneself, leading to a deluge of thoughts, hurt, feelings, and wonder. Summer of Then is a similar explosion of interiority. From an evening that offers unusually clean air and bright stars to a dawn that is suffocated by disease and miasma, a decade-long story unfolds, full of longing, betrayal, memory, desire, and love.” The Telegraph India
“Bose’s novel is an urgent read. It lays bare the grime behind the glossy life of an academic in India. It makes evident the fluidity of desires women feel without voicing it. … It clears the air to make Indian writing in English remain relevant without pining for another Roy or Seth. It is a fresh voice that deftly captures yearnings, memories, grief, desperation and hunger of a woman.” Rahul Singh, The Federal
“Summer of Then is of course about the narrator’s ever-changing emotional and mental landscapes, but it is also about the body at large. The impenetrable bodies of class and caste, cities, and nation; the frailty of our hearts and bodies that desire and fall in love with what is solidly out of reach; and how the layers of hopes and memories that accumulate over time on these bodies disillusion us from reality and prevent us from seeing ourselves as creatures stuck like pesky gnats on these unforgiving bodies.” Sayari Debnath, Scroll.in
“Set across three Indian cities and Scotland, this deeply moving novel explores the effect of politics on academia. … There is love, longing, betrayal in Bose’s novel. But importantly, it also dwells on the intimacies of relationships—sexual, romantic and platonic—against the trauma of sexual assault and harassment.” Asian Age
For more information about the above title, please contact Carla Briner (carla@pontas-agency.com).