Rajesh Talwar
Fiction, Murder Mystery, Thriller
Book Title : How I Became a Taliban Assassin & The Murder That Wasn’t
How I Became a Taliban Assassin is a title that derives from the story of Shamsher Khan, a central protagonist in the first novella. The fictional events described in the novella take place in 2020, a year before the Taliban return to power.
What turns Shamsher Khan into a jihadi participating in an attack on a guest house in Kabul? Not long ago, he worked for an aid organisation where the love of his life, Zeenat, too worked. Shamsher does not wish to murder innocents but seeks revenge against a specific individual. Unknown to him, Zeenat has come to live in the very same guest house. Will Shamsher carry out his attack?
A second love story running in parallel is that of Sunny Singh, a British-Indian Sikh who works in Kabul as a consultant and has fallen madly in love with Aloka, an Indian working on human rights. Will Zeenat and Aloka survive the attack on their guesthouse? Or will Mullah Shamsuddin, the man who planned the attack, succeed?
The Murder That Wasn’t, the second novella is also on the theme of unfulfilled love. Here, too, innocents die, but in this story, those accused of the killings may also be innocent.
A young girl is murdered under mysterious circumstances. The family servant is also found dead. The parents are suspected of having killed their daughter and the servant. Is it possible, though, that the killer was someone else? Is it also possible that these were not murders?
About the author
Rajesh Talwar has written on a variety of themes ranging from social justice to law and culture for international and national magazines, newspapers, and websites including The Guardian, The Economic Times, the Pioneer, and Sunday Observer.
His non-fiction works range from books on legal literacy and human rights to those on the sacred feminine and world culture. His most notable book on judicial reform ‘The Judiciary on Trial,’ (Cosmos Publications, Delhi; 2002) was reviewed and applauded by no less than the late Khushwant Singh, veteran journalist, and commentator. A book on hijras titled ‘The Third Sex and Human Rights’ was extracted and used as the lead story in The Asian Age’s Sunday Supplement.
More recently, Rajesh Talwar wrote the best-selling ‘Courting Injustice: The Nirbhaya Case and Its Aftermath’ (Hay House; 2013) in the aftermath of the terrible rape in December 2013 which made international headlines around the world.
Talwar is also a playwright where he has focussed on social themes. He is the author of 2002 satire on the law criminalising homosexuality (Inside Gayland), a play on dowry deaths (The Bride Who Would Not Burn), and a play on AIDS (High Fidelity Transmission). In 2016 he wrote ‘Gandhi, Ambedkar and the Four-Legged Scorpion’ a historical play on Gandhi and Ambedkar in the context of their differing attitudes towards the evil of untouchability. His play ‘Kaash Kashmir’ (2017) examines the conflict in the valley.
