My Beautiful Shadow

by Radhika Jha

Kayo is a young Tokyo housewife and mother. Outwardly, she is no different from other young mothers, but her secret sets her apart. She belongs to a kind of club, which involves luxury, beautiful clothes and accessories.
The club makes it possible for Kayo to escape her tedious life, to become someone else and to embrace a dazzling new world. But it quickly becomes an obsession, a drug, the way to both paradise and hell. Can she find her way out of the dark underworld of debt, lies and prostitution? Or is she doomed to exchange one form of loneliness for another?
A deeply absorbing novel about the "holes" that suddenly appear in women's lives, My Beautiful Shadow is a powerful cautionary tale about consumerism gone mad.

209 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 1, 2017

About the author

RADHIKA JHA is from India (born Delhi 1970), studied anthropology at Amherst College, did her Masters in Political Science at the University of Chicago and has lived in Paris as an exchange student. She writes and performs Odissi dancing. She has worked for Hindustan Times and BusinessWorld, writing on culture, the environment and the economy. She has also worked for the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, where she started up the Interact project for the education of the children of the victims of terrorism in different parts of India. She now lives in Tokyo with her husband and 2 children. The story SLEEPERS from THE ELEPHANT & THE MARUTI has appeared in Ellery Queen Magazine and Radhika has contributed other stories to anthologies and publications, for example Akashic Books' Delhi Noir series.