One quote about female friendship really stuck with me: “Why was I so busy protecting the copper I had with you, that I destroyed the gold I had with her?” The Bandit Queens focuses on community and turns the trope of the bored housewife on its head. By the end of the novel, the body count has risen and Geeta has a real sisterhood. Geeta starts the book friendless and a pariah, with the village convinced she killed her husband.

It’s a revenge story and calls to all of us who’ve ever felt like we could kill someone who’s hurt our friend.Īn astute examination of caste and gender in India, The Bandit Queens follows Geeta, whose abusive husband left her years ago, and a village of women who have had enough with being treated like shit. The Bandit Queens isn’t one of those abuse stories that ends with the woman dead, having taken back none of her agency.

But when she’s approached for help in ridding another wife of her abusive drunk of a husband, her reluctant agreement sets in motion a chain of events that will change the lives of all the women in the village….Ī darkly irreverent and fresh take on a feminist revenge thriller, perfect for readers of My Sister the Serial Killer, How To Kidnap The Rich and the Sharon Horgan series Bad Sisters.“You wouldn’t think a book about women killing their abusive husbands would be funny, but I could not stop laughing while reading The Bandit Queens. Geeta is believed to have killed her vanished husband – a rumour she hasn’t bothered trying to correct, because a reputation like that can keep a single woman safe in rural India. Until the other women in her village decide they want to be widows, too. ‘A radically feel-good story about the murder of no-good husbands by a cast of unsinkable women’ – New York Timesįor Geeta, life as a widow is more peaceful than life as a wife…

vivid, unsentimental story that succeeds in being both satirical and moving.’ Guardian ‘A darkly funny revenge drama rooted in the reality of rural India. ‘Not since Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger has the rotten core of modern India been exposed in quite such blackly antic fashion as Parini Shroff manages here in this intermittently absurd, feminist revenge caper about a group of snarky, much-abused, predominantly Hindu wives…sheer gutsy verve.’ The Times Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023

The bandit queens a novel