14 July 2026 — Westland Books is delighted to announce the Indian edition of The Others by Sheena Kalayil, longlisted for the Women’s Prize in Fiction 2026, published under their award-winning literary imprint Context.
The Others follows three different lives that get entangled in a love affair as a revolution sweeps through East Germany. Kalayil’s immersive prose brings alive an extraordinary story about love and identity in a time of political unrest in postwar Europe.
The Others will be released on 24th July 2026.
About the Book
It is 1989, and in a small Baltic city in East Germany, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, three young people from vastly different backgrounds become friends. Armando is a factory worker from Mozambique, Lolita is a medical student from India, and Theo is an East Berliner who dreams of being a writer.
When Armando and Lolita make a grisly discovery, they find themselves caught up in the politics of Theo’s homeland more than ever before. While a quiet revolution sweeps through Eastern Europe, and the Berlin Wall teeters, the three find themselves entangled in a poignant love triangle which threatens their futures.
As the world order shifts, their three lives are bound together in a web of love, lies and fears, leaving each irrevocably changed
About the author
Sheena Kalayil is the author of four novels. Her debut novel, The Bureau of Second Chances, won the Writers’ Guild Award for Best First Novel (2018) and was shortlisted that year for the Edward Stanford Prize for Fiction with a Sense of Place. She followed this with The Inheritance, and then The Wild Wind. The latter is based on her nomadic childhood, shuttling between India and Zambia. Her fourth novel, The Others, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (2026).
She has worked all over the world, including in Nepal, Mozambique, Tunisia and Venezuela. Since 2002, she has lived in the UK, and now teaches at the University of Manchester.
Praise for The Others
‘Set in 1989 in East Germany, The Others by Sheena Kalayil follows three friends experiencing the taste of freedom in very different ways. Full of compelling characters, it is a gripping story of love and imagination.’
—Cariad Lloyd, 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026 judge
‘In a more just world, The Others might be celebrated like first love—tender and enduring. In our world, its presence feels more like a cathartic reckoning.’
—The Hindu
‘An expert novel, The Others is superbly organized, with a steady, tense air of suspense, fine and persuasive emotion, and, above all, truly rich characters alive in a real history. The last pages produced in me a gasp of amazement.’
—Jonathan Lethem
‘Kalayil’s deft prose is both precise and lyrical, vividly conjuring place, time and characters in flux.’
—Joanne Nadin
‘I found it hard to put Sheena Kalayil’s fourth novel down, so powerful is the untold story it tells. Yes, The Others is a love story, but it’s also magnificently more; I loved the delicate intertwining themes of identity and displacement; setting and historical and political context are incredibly skillfully deployed; but there is also a rare and precious breadth of imagination in the novel. The writing is beautifully confident and flowing, and the characters and their journeys will stay in my mind for a very long time. The final chapter made me cry!’
—Emma Henderson
