Pre-order: Shipped to arrive on the 1st of June 2026
 
This is a story of love between a father and a son.
 
13-year-old Ved is a sweet, inquisitive boy living in a world where love must hide in plain sight.
His adoptive father, Da, is his entire universe — fiercely loving, fiercely protective, harbouring a secret that could destroy them both: Da is gay at a time when Section 377 makes homosexuality a crime.
 
Set in an Indian metropolis in 2013, Da is a tender story of a boy caught between devotion and fear, chronicling the everyday courage it takes to love someone the world refuses to accept.
 
About the Author
 
Arathi Menon is an author and columnist based in London. She completed her MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) at the University of East Anglia. Her debut book, a memoir titled Leaving Home with Half a Fridge, was published by Pan Macmillan India. Her middle-grade mystery novel, A Thud in the Middle of the Night, was brought out by DC Books, Kerala, and later published by Yali Books, New York, under the title A Mystery at Lili Villa.
 
Her awards include the SI Leeds Literary Prize and Novel London. She has also been on numerous shortlists and longlists, including the BPA First Novel Award, Cinnamon Literary Award, Virginia Prize for Fiction, UA 100X100, FAB Prize, Ivan Juritz Prize and the Penguin WriteNow programme. She was part of a spoken word group installation at Tate Modern, London.
 
Author Image Credit - John Antony Thadicaran.