Sexy, surprising, and subversively wise, Babyji is the story of Anamika Sharma, a spirited student growing up in Delhi. At school she is an ace at quantum physics. At home she sneaks off to her parents' scooter garage to read the Kama Sutra. Before long she has seduced an elegant older divorcée and the family servant, and has caught the eye of a classmate coveted by all the boys.

With the world of adulthood dancing before her, Anamika confronts questions that would test someone twice her age. Ebullient, unfettered, and introducing one of the most charming heroines in contemporary fiction, Babyji is irresistible.

"Anamika's the kind of girl her traditional peers aren't quite sure about: is the sexually precocious heroine of Dawesar's second novel (after Miniplanner) a feminine Didi or a masculine Bhaiyya, a cerebral schoolgirl or a predatory lecher? After studying chaos theory in her high school physics textbook, Anamika feels justified in pursuing three simultaneous same-sex affairs, with her doting servant, her impressionable schoolmate and a beautiful older woman who inspires such complicated feelings that Anamika nicknames her India, after their vast and varied homeland. Anamika uses sex as a means to investigate life's chemistry and her autonomy outside of rigid Brahmin mores. Despite the intensity of her passion, particularly for India, Anamika's comic stiffness is evident in such amorous declarations as 'I want to collapse my wave function into you.' As issues of caste, meritocracy and self-sacrifice arise, Anamika purifies her intentions by channeling them into helping a troubled male student, Chakra Dev, who's almost as oversexed as she is. If the unusual secondary characters occasionally seem as gratuitous as pornographic movie extras, Anamika's ponderings and emotional reversals are lavished with as much attention as a 16-year-old girl would demand. Despite its meandering path, the novel achieves an impressive balance between moral inquiry and decadent pleasure, pleasing the intellect and the senses — if not necessarily the heart — of the open-minded reader. Agent, Ira Silverberg. (Feb.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"If Lolita had grown up in India, she might have debuted in a novel like this. Babyji is riveting, a great gift to read." Vendela Vida, author of And Now You Can Go

"I loved Babyji. It's a cunning lithe defiant sexy tiger's roar of a book." Ali Smith, author of Hotel World

"From the moment Abha Dawesar dropped me slap-bang into the middle of Anamika's complicated life, I found myself fascinated. How often does one encounter a sixteen-year-old who applies her preternatural intellect not only to her far-ranging sexual conquests but also to quantum physics and India's complex caste politics? Irreverent yet tender, compassionate yet hard-headed, precociously wise and undeniably sexy, Dawesar's Anamika channels a wonderful new Indian reality. More power to her." Meera Nair, author of Video

Babyji is a sexy, surprising, subversively wise new novel about an Indian Lolita and her quest to conquer love and life.

Abha Dawesar was born in 1974 in New Delhi, India, and graduated with honors from Harvard University. She was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts fiction fellowship and is the author of the novel Miniplanner. She lives in New York and can be reached on her website www.abhadawesar.com.