Three Virgins and Other Stories

Author-artist Manjula Padmanabhan returns with ten stories: five new, five old, some dark, some funny, all edgy.

A vampire visits New Delhi, a space traveller returns to her ancestral home, a character from an ancient epic is transported into the future… To each story Padmanabhan brings an unexpected twist, a touch of satire, a whiff of cynicism, a delicious undercurrent of dark humour.

Drawing on her earlier, highly acclaimed anthology, Hot Death Cold Soup, and adding new stories to it, Padmanabhan presents a potent and sometimes disturbing collection that will leave readers asking for more.

“She revels in the macabre, pushes the envelope on the extreme… Her stories and plays work so masterfully on so many levels?as twist-in-the-tale page-turners, as on-the-edge adventures, as miniature theatres of the absurd that the reader’s imagination plays almost as singular a part in them as the writer’s.” — Sumana Mukherjee, The Hindu

“The best thing about these stories is their momentum, their narrative drive. You keep turning the pages and there is always a pay-off at the end…. Hot Death, Cold Soup not only stays afloat, it fairly zips along, it flies.” — Mukul Kesavan, Outlook 

“Padmanabhan is aware of the fact that a story can grab a reader with the use of humour. But the hooks sink in when even the farfetched sounds plausible?That is her real strength ? to make the reader feel comfortable, and still keep him guessing.” — Arun Katiyar, India Today