Suresh U Kumar's Debut Novel, The Girl in Scarlet Hijab Becomes #1 Amazon Bestseller in Indian Literature

July 2025 – New Jersey, USA 
Award-winning entrepreneur, professor and author Suresh U. Kumar's debut novel The Girl in Scarlet Hijab, a historical fiction set in India soared to the top of Amazon’s New charts in Indian & Asian Literature. The novel first published by Rupa Publications has been shortlisted for the 2025 Delhi Literature Festival Jury Award and featured at the Kerala Literature Festival.

Set in the political cauldron of 1980s Kerala and interwoven with India’s freedom movement, the novel explores themes of courage, youth resistance, loyalty, betrayal, and love in times of tyranny. At its center is a young woman whose strategic brilliance and emotional depth make her the beating heart of a revolution.

Book Summary

1981, Kochi, India:
As Kerala erupts in student protests, the Home Minister’s convoy is halted by human barricades outside a hospital. Inside, an ageing revolutionary lies at death's door, the victim of a ruthless assassination attempt engineered by a corrupt political cabal. Tensions explode on the streets, triggering a brutal police crackdown. At the center of this upheaval are three friends—two idealistic young men and a mysterious girl in a scarlet hijab whose quiet courage, strategic brilliance, and unwavering devotion to justice make her an icon of the resistance. As the state spirals into chaos and the ruling Left Front government teeters on collapse, dangerous secrets begin to emerge, threatening to upend the lives of everyone involved and shatter the bonds that hold the revolution together.
 

The Girl in Scarlet Hijab is a fascinating multi-generational family saga, an emotional evocation of a bygone India, and a humbling meditation on the hardships endured by past generations for the sake of building the free and strong nation that India is today.

Praise for the book includes:

• “Brilliant… disturbing and illuminating” — Kendra Sahitya Akademi Awardee
• “A tour de force” — Mallika Sukumaran
• “Goose-pimple worthy drama” — Neetha Raman

With cinematic prose and emotional power, The Girl in Scarlet Hijab is a must-read for fans of The God of Small Things, The Henna Artist, and The Covenant of Water

The book is available now on Amazon: https://a.co/d/5vsCKFL