Aleph is delighted to announce the launch of Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto on 26th April at the Cricket Club of India (CCI), Mumbai. Acclaimed journalist Naresh Fernandes will be in conversation with the author.

‘Utterly persuasive and deeply affecting...[This] is a profoundly moving book: I cannot remember when I last read something as touching as this.’ —Amitav Ghosh

‘[Em and The Big Hoom] plunged me into a world so vivid, that when I finished, I found something had shifted and changed within myself...This is a rare and brilliant book, unlike any other that I have read coming out of India.’ —Kiran Desai

Em and The Big Hoom is set in Bombay in the late twentieth century and is about the Mendeses: mother, father, son and daughter. Between Em, the mother, driven frequently to hospital by her mental illness and failed suicide attempts, and The Big Hoom, the father, trying to hold things together as best he can, they are an extraordinarily brave and eccentric family.

Searing and at times darkly funny, Jerry Pinto which was over twenty years in the writing, is also a deeply moving story of love and family relationships. ’s first novel, ~

Jerry Pinto lives and works in Mumbai. He has been a mathematics tutor, school librarian, journalist and columnist. He is now associated with MelJol, an NGO that works in the sphere of child rights. His published works include a book of poems, Asylum, and Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb, which won the National Award for the Best Book on Cinema in 2007. Em and The Big Hoom

is his first novel.

For more information about the book and regarding author interviews, please contact: Hohoi Vaiphei, Aleph Book Company, 161, B/4, Gulmohar House, Yusuf Sarai Community Centre, New Delhi – 110 049; Tel: +91 114 992 6649, Mob: +91 880 099 8772.