New Delhi, 11 April 2025: Penguin Random House India is thrilled to announce the acquisition of Mahesh Rao’s Half Light, a deeply atmospheric and tender novel that navigates the tensions of concealed desire and the longing for freedom. Slated for release in October 2025 under the Hamish Hamilton imprint, Half Light is an exquisite story of love, secrecy, and reckoning.
Set between the misty mountains of Darjeeling and the towering skyline of Mumbai, Half Light follows the lives of Neville and Pavan—two men whose fates become intertwined when they share an illicit connection in a secluded, crumbling hotel. For Neville, a free-spirited young man, such encounters are thrilling and fleeting, but for Pavan, a reserved hotel worker, the consequences of discovery are far more profound. Their lives cross paths again years later, in a vastly different setting, as the ghosts of their past threaten to emerge. Against the shifting socio-political landscape of India—on the cusp of decriminalizing homosexuality—the novel captures the nuances of longing, repression, and the quiet hope for a future beyond concealment.
Sharing his thoughts on the book, author Mahesh Rao remarks, ‘I am absolutely delighted to be returning to Penguin with Half Light. I’m so grateful to Manasi Subramaniam for embracing the novel with so much enthusiasm and sensitivity, and I’m sure that she and her team will see it out into the world with the greatest of care. This is a novel all about lives kept out of the light — a repression that has profound sexual, social, legal and political implications —and I can’t wait for it to have its own moment of illumination.’
Manasi Subramaniam, Editor-in-Chief and Vice-President, Hamish Hamilton, Allen Lane, Viking, Penguin and Penguin Classics, PRH India, adds, ‘In Half Light, Mahesh Rao pulls you into a world where the spaces between people are as charged as the moments of contact. This is a novel about secrets that refuse to stay buried, about desire in its many forms—dangerous, liberating and ultimately redemptive. It’s a rare thing to find a book that is so elegantly written yet so full of raw, lived emotion. I’m beyond excited for readers to experience it.’
Milee Ashwarya, Publisher and Senior VP, Adult Publishing Group, PRH India, says, ‘Half Light is Mahesh Rao’s third novel in which he explores the emotions of love, desire, and the consequences of our actions. Beautifully written with unforgettable characters, it is a must-read for everyone.’
A story of longing, resilience, and the quiet pursuit of freedom, this book is for anyone who has ever searched for light in the shadows.
About the Author
Mahesh Rao’s short fiction has been shortlisted for various awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His debut novel, ‘The Smoke Is Rising’, won the Tata First Book Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Crossword Prize. ‘One Point Two Billion’, his collection of short stories, was published in 2015, and in 2018, ‘Polite Society’, his Delhi-set reimagining of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’, both to critical acclaim.
