Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist Avni Doshi’s second novel The First House (HarperCollins India) traces the inner life of the protagonist after her husband declares one day that he no longer wishes to remain married. As she tries to make sense of this new situation and what “shape” she must take, a necessary metamorphosis, the past self begins to disintegrate.

“When I start writing a book, I’m usually absorbed by an image,” Dubai-based Doshi tells us. “I don’t know when this will appear. There is, however, a flow of energy, a pull of some kind that demands my attention… a face, a room, an existing work of art.” This novel began as a narrative about a family with three siblings and their parents. “Months later, I saw a statue of the Roman goddess Diana (Artemis to the Greeks),” she shares, which prompted her to attempt a short story around it. A little later, she was also fascinated by periodical cicadas and their lifecycles. “All these felt like different projects until I realised they were the same book,” she reveals.