India, April 18 -- On August 17, 1947, the kingdom of Thiruvithamkoor declares itself a free nation, refusing to join India. In the years that follow, it becomes a republic of coups and revolutions, a tale chronicled by a shadowy informant known as CID. Through his eyes, S Hareesh reimagines Kerala's history as an alternate world where the lines between fact and fiction, faith and power, sanity and madness blur. At once a work of speculative history and sly metafiction, August 17 explores how nations are built - and undone - by the stories they choose to believe. Brilliant, subversive and darkly funny, this is a novel of astonishing scope and imagination. Rendered in Jayasree Kalathil's masterful translation, August 17 confirms Hareesh, winner of the JCB Prize for the 2020 novel Moustache, as one of the most daring and original voices in contemporary Indian fiction....