Young Author Shruti Upadhaya is all set to launch her first novel entitled ‘White Noise’ on Wednesday, Aug 30th, 2017 at 6:00 pm at Café Turtle, Greater Kailash Part I, New Delhi. The novel is a psychological thriller with a blend of dark romance  and crime fiction.

The launch will see Shruti in conversation with Delhi-based author Devpriya Roy, who is known for her novel, The Heat And Dust, that chronicles the story of travelling through India on local buses, which debuted no 1 on the HT- AC Neilson list.

About the Book :

White Noise is a psychological thriller/dark romance. What starts off as a seemingly playful liaison eventually becomes dark and rather mysterious. The story exemplifies the sweet poison that all of us subconsciously desire or somehow, somewhere encounter. The male protagonist is irresistible at best and venomous when he is real- the kind one would want to know more about and eventually fall in love with without knowing or realizing what lies in the offing once you’ve succumbed.

A non-conformist and brutally ambitious, he does not care about the ethical and moral repercussions of his actions. The female protagonist is a dreamer, readily giving into the man and leaving herself at his peril even as it destroys her mental sanity little by little. The first part is narrated to us from the point of view of the girl.

After which comes the voice of an omniscient narrator who gives us a neutral insight into the plot. And then the plot takes a sudden turn with a secret being revealed- one that lies at the very heart of this liaison; after which a large part of the story is narrated to us in the voice of the male protagonist. It is a rollercoaster for the readers as the chapters take swerves from one revelation to another. One unique aspect of the book is that the male and female protagonists have no names and there is no physical setting because the author believes that these events could happen to anyone, anywhere. It is a novella (143 words).

About the Author

A young Delhi girl, Shruti Upadhaya did her schooling from Springdales, Dhaula Kuan. She always had a flair for writing, and looked forward to her English classes and essay writing competitions during her early days, for which she also won several laurels in her school. After Schooling, she went to Kolkata with her family and did her English Literature at Calcutta University and simultaneously started  writing for The Times of India, Kolkata, and also started her own blog. Shruti enjoyed writing poetry and short pieces on just about anything that caught her attention. After her graduation, Shruti went to Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication to study Journalism in Pune and interned with media houses such as NDTV 24x7 and CNN-IBN. During that time, she also simultaneously wrote for The Times of India, Pune, and later worked for Kolkata Mirror.

In the year 2013, while learning French, Shruti realized once again that there was only one thing she enjoyed more than anything else, writing, and that's when she decided, she wanted to turn a full time writer, and surrounded herself with literature. Some of the books which inspired her were the works of Murakami, Sylvia Plath, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Nair, Chitra Banerjee, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to name a few.  Crime is one of Shruti's favourite genres. She is in awe of writers like Gillian Flynn and Liz Nugent.

In February 2016, Shruti started penning her first novel, 'White Noise'. "The experience of White Noise was nothing like anything I’d written before. I often say, I didn’t write White Noise, it happened to me,” says Shruti. Once she started to write, it started to flow in the most organic way. After a while, she stopped controlling her characters, and soon saw them coming to life.

Shruti, is also one of the chosen authors from India to be invited for the Scottish Crime Writers Festival. 'Bloody Scotland' is a crime writing festival that celebrates Scottish and International crime writers. It showcases debut voices and encourages new writers by bringing them together and giving them a platform.