SONIA FALEIRO
THE GOOD GIRLS: AN ORDINARY KILLING
Non-fiction, 2021
"A masterly and agenda-setting inquest into how the deaths of two teenage girls shone a light into the darkest corners of a nation."
REVIEWS
The New York Times: “The Good Girls is transfixing; it has the pacing and mood of a whodunit ... Faleiro has a talent for ramifying plots and slippery characters — for a narrative that resists easy formulation. We glide swiftly, smoothly, only to realize that we’re not approaching a clearing but being led into a darker, more tangled story." (Parul Sehgal)
The New York Times Book Review: "This story is at heart a Southern Gothic — a Southern Hemisphere Gothic — a tale of stymied sexuality and buried secrets. A puzzle with a surprise at the end. A riveting, terrible tale, one all too common, but Faleiro’s gorgeous prose makes it bearable."
Interview with Scott Simon, NPR Weekend Edition: "The Good Girls Aims To Uncover The Story Behind The Deaths Of Two Indian Girls."
The Washington Post: "A remarkable feat of reporting. What she finds reveals as much about the failings of India’s law enforcement, media and politics as it does about the girls’ deaths."
The Economist: "A sobering portrait of a country where progress has been undermined by inequality, short-termist politics and Mr Modi’s divisive Hindu nationalism. It is a powerful indictment of a society failing its most vulnerable members.
The Financial Times: "A gripping real life mystery and compelling whodunnit taut with dramatic tension."
The Wall Street Journal: "The Good Girls” is a riveting—sometimes astonishing—work of forensic journalism."
The Sunday Times, UK: "The Good Girls is a haunting piece of narrative reporting that lingers in the mind long after the final page is turned. It is difficult to read but difficult to put down. To understand the challenges facing young women in India today, it is essential reading."
The Observer: "Sonia Faleiro’s meticulously researched investigation results in a powerful, unflinching account of misogyny, female shame and the notion of honour."
The Spectator: "A Romeo and Juliet-like tragedy in Uttar Pradesh ... This compelling ‘whodunit’ is a desperate reflection on the status of women."
Times Literary Supplement: "The Good Girls is at once shocking and mundane, quiet and loud, understated and savage."
Literary Review: "The Good Girls is a compassionate, timely and necessary book that explores the issues of sex, violence, shame, honour and what it is to be a girl growing up in modern India."
Publisher's Weekly: "True crime buffs will be fascinated."
Kirkus: "A modern day Rashomon."
Publishers Weekly's true crime to watch for in 2021
Cosmopolitan's books by POC authors to watch in 2021
Amazon's highly anticipated true crime books of 2021
Crime Reads' most anticipated crime books of 2021
Vogue's most anticipated books of 2021
Grove Atlantic/Bloomsbury/Penguin Random House India/Penguin Random House Canada/Czarne
Audiobook available from Penguin Random House Audio and Bloomsbury
At Bloomsbury, Hetty Touquet leads publicity for The Good Girls
For publicity queries in the US please email Justina Batchelor
BEAUTIFUL THING: INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF BOMBAY'S DANCE BARS
Non-fiction, 2010
“[An] intimate and valuable book of literary reportage that will break your heart several times over." The New York Times
Book of the Year: The Sunday Times, The Economist, CNN, The San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus, The Observer, The Guardian, and NPR
Grove Atlantic/Canongate/Penguin India/Black Inc/Actes Sud/Lind & Co/Nieu Amsterdam
13 MEN
Non-fiction, Kindle Single, 2015
"A memorable portrait of a community in turmoil": The Guardian
Interview with NPR's All Things Considered
Interview with Columbia Journalism Review
Deca (English)/Actes Sud (French)
THE GIRL
Fiction, Penguin India, 2006
’In the tradition of Elizabeth Smart’s cult classic By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, The Girl makes romantic suffering something of epic proportions."
India Today
'A classic. Beautiful lyricism, poetic passages and evocative descriptions of Goa.'
Deccan Herald
'A lyrical first novel rich with dark visual imagery.'
India Today
'The girl has wisdom, tenderness, and a sort of agelessness that sets it apart from contemporary fiction in India.'
Far Eastern Economic Review
A PRECIOUS TRUTH, CUIK MAGAZINE
June 2023
ABOUT
Sonia Faleiro is the author of The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing (2021), now available from Grove Atlantic, Bloomsbury UK, Penguin Random House India and Penguin Random House Canada. The New York Times said, "The Good Girls is transfixing." A second review in the paper called it "gorgeous." The Wall Street Journal called The Good Girls a "riveting, sometimes astonishing work of forensic journalism." And The Financial Times described it as "a gripping real life mystery."
Sonia is also the author of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Bars, which was named a book of the year by the Guardian, Observer, Sunday Times, Economist, NPR and Time Out, and a novella, The Girl.
Her writing has received support from the Pulitzer Centre and The Investigative Fund, and appears in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Harper's, Granta, 1843, The California Sunday Magazine, and MIT Technology Review.
Sonia is the founder of the literary mentorship program South Asia Speaks, and the co-founder of Deca, a global cooperative of award-winning journalists.
She lives in London and is represented by The Wylie Agency.
Author photo by Jonathan Ring, 2020
SELECTED NEW WRITING
A Photographer Documents the Secluded Life of his Aunts
The New Yorker (February, 2021)
How An Indian Stand Up Comic Found Himself Arrested for a Joke He Didn't Tell
TIME (February 2021)
How India became the World Leader in Internet Shutdowns
MIT Technology Review
India's Unending Occupation of Kashmir
Harper's
Britain's Ethnic Minorities are being left for Dead
The New York Times
Boris Johnson’s Coronavirus Lies Are Killing Britons
The Intercept
What the world can learn from Kerala about how to fight covid-19
MIT Technology Review
Dismantling the World's Largest Democracy
Foreign Policy
In the ring with India’s most powerful woman
1843
To Live and Die in Mumbai
The California Sunday Magazine
The Long Rescue
Harper's
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