Hangwoman: Everyone Loves a Good Hanging

Chetna belongs to the Grddha Mullicks, a family of hangmen who live near Kolkata’s Nimtala ghat and boast of a lineage reaching back to centuries before Christ. Executions have grown rare and the family is poor; her brother was left disabled by an attack that followed one of their father Phanibhushan’s hangings. When a successor to Phanibhushan is needed, the government names Chetna, then twenty-two, as India’s first woman to hold the post. A television journalist, Sanjeev Kumar Mitra, pushes her into the spotlight, even a reality show, and asks to marry her. As her first execution draws near, Chetna fights to free herself from an overbearing father and a lover who controls her, in a story that turns over violence, justice and mercy.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

552 pages in the original

Genres

Family, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

India

First published

2012 by DC Books

Author's age

42 when first published

ISBN

9788126439362 (original)

9780670086542 (Hamish Hamilton, India)

9780143424697 (Penguin Books India, India)

More

Wikidata