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How to Date a Fanatic

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Advance Praise for HOW TO DATE A FANATIC

"A multitude of events jostle for the prize for the most dishonorable in India's headlong plunge into darkness this century, but the causes for the riots that swept through university campuses in Delhi in 2016 must count among the top ten. Here is a novel that is a sharp, truthful snapshot of the time, seen through the surprising lens of queerness. Vivid, humane, wise, and very funny, Kashyap's book brings together the political novel and the romcom in a felicitous union. Read it, laugh, and feel very scared."
| - Neel Mukherjee, Booker Prize shortlisted author of The Lives of Others and Choice

"A propulsive story with harrowing scenes of violent Delhi uprisings in 2016, How to Date a Fanatic is a dazzling novel that enchants, seduces, and devastates the reader. Kashyap writes with compassion, wit, and a deep understanding of our complex human nature-a literary magician casting an intoxicating spell!"
- Mona Susan Power, author of A Council of Dolls

"Irreverent, witty, and moving, this novel pulsates with an electric urgency through the politics of an India turned treacherous for many. Queer friendships, romance, and passions are rendered with a much-needed complexity and a totally fresh, illuminating, uncompromising lens in this layered story. Personal betrayals and political chaos will not break the hopeful heart, Kashyap tells us, and the unforgettable characters here ask that we believe."
- Sonora Jha, author of Intemperance

HOW TO DATE A FANATIC
A Novel
By Aruni Kashyap

NEA and Harvard Radcliffe Fellow, Aruni Kashyap's debut novel, HOW TO DATE A FANATIC (on sale July 14, 2026; HarperVia; $20.99), is a mesmerizing love story set against the backdrop of political unrest in contemporary India. Exploring the perennial tensions between the personal and political through a propulsive plot, this novel asks urgent questions that are important for anyone invested in democracy-sustaining conversations.

The story centers on Rohit, a young professor who has just finished his PhD in New York and returns to India to teach, joined by his longtime friends Minti, the lesbian therapist and indomitable activist, and Sarfaraz, a handsome failed model and childhood friend of Rohit. In Delhi, Rohit falls madly in love with Dhruv, the tall, fierce activist colleague who insists they're better off as 'soulmates' than as lovers. Nursing his wounds, Rohit throws himself into the queer dating circuit in the city, before meeting Sayan, a sweet but proud younger man who longs for Rohit's attention. At underground parties and political debates, Rohit and his friends navigate sex, love, heartbreak, religious fundamentalism, and political suppression. When tensions around the city come to a boil, unleashing an explosive ethnic riot, its stunning, heartbreaking outcome will change each of their lives forever. What we look for in love, Kashyap suggests, may not be too far from what we look for in democracy: can we be safeguarded without giving up our freedom?

In the popular depictions of India, we rarely see the stories that nationalism has shoved under the carpet-especially stories of the massive human rights violations committed by the Indian state in the country's margins. Kashyap's work is part of a new body of socially engaged political Indian English writing that extends the work of writers such as Arundhati Roy in surprising ways. Kashyap himself hails from India's Northeast-a highly contested and racialized 'borderland' region housing hundreds of ethnic communities, mostly tribal and indigenous. Unlike most Anglophone Indian writers who are privileged in terms of caste, class, and geography, Kashyap comes to the English language through alienation from the nation. As such, his work brings us a uniquely fresh and powerful perspective on state violence, the experiences of the marginalized, and the diasporic, globalized world we inhabit.

About the Author

Aruni Kashyap is an acclaimed author and translator of several novels and poetry collections and has received awards and fellowships from Harvard, NEA, and more. His work has appeared in CNN, ELLE, India Today, The New Indian Express, and other publications. He is an associate professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia.