Meena Kandasamy is a poet, novelist, and translator. Her books include the poetry collections Touch and Ms. Militancy and three novels, The Gypsy Goddess, When I Hit You, and Exquisite Cadavers. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize, and the Hindu Lit Prize. The Book of Desire, her translation of the love poetry of the two thousand-year-old Tamil classic Tirukkural, was published in 2023.