Besharam roughly translates to "shameless" in Hindi. This collection from Indian writer Priya-Alika Elias is a bold, sassy, and brilliantly written book on love, dating, body image, consent, and other issues that women today relate to and men should be thinking about. Elias reflects on, and challenges, the ideas of how women are told by society to be humble, obedient, and ashamed of their actions and desires. Her writing is fresh, feminist, and thought-provoking, disrupting taboos and exploring what it means to be a young women in today's world.

“If you're a fan of rivals-to-lovers, look no further!”—Aiden Thomas, New York Times bestselling author of Cemetery Boys Heated competition leads to even hotter romance in this YA summer rom-com for fans of Sandhya Menon and Emma Lord! Seventeen-year-old, high-achieving Kavya Joshi has always been told she’s a little too ambitious, a little too mouthy, and overall just a little too much. In one word: besharam. So, when her nemesis, Ian Jun, witnesses Kavya’s very public breakup with her loser boyfriend on the last day of junior year, she decides to lay low and spend the summer doing what she loves best–working part time playing princess roles for childrens’ birthday parties. But her plan is shot when she’s cast as Ariel instead of her beloved Belle, and learns that Ian will be her Prince Eric for the summer. [Cue the combative banter.] Exhausted by Kavya and Ian’s years-long feud, their friends hatch a plan to end their rivalry by convincing them to participate in a series of challenges throughout the summer. Kavya is only too eager to finally be declared the winner. But as the competition heats up, so too does the romantic tension, until it escalates from a simmer to a full-on burn.

Besharam roughly translates to "shameless" in Hindi. This collection from Indian writer Priya-Alika Elias is a bold, sassy, and brilliantly written book on love, dating, body image, consent, and other issues that women today relate to and men should be thinking about. Elias reflects on, and challenges, the ideas of how women are told by society to be humble, obedient, and ashamed of their actions and desires. Her writing is fresh, feminist, and thought-provoking, disrupting taboos and exploring what it means to be a young women in today's world.

Learning that your mind and body have been taken hostage is one thing. Learning how to take them back is another. What if those that are returned are different to the ones that were lost? Besharam - Nafeesa Hamid's glorious debut collection - asks this and many other questions. When does a girl become a woman? When does her world allow her to become a woman? And what kind of woman should she be? The answers aren't readily forthcoming. As she treads the shifting line between woman and daughter, between Pakistan and the West, between conservative Islam and liberal, Nafeesa has almost had to find a new language to try to communicate the difficulties of her situation. And what a language! At times hard and pointed, at other times wonderfully and colourfully evocative, erupting with femininity, empowerment and rebellion. It is this language that makes Besharam such a pleasure to read in spite of the pain it contains. This really is a magical first book of poetry. Besharam contains guest poems from Birmingham poets Mina Mekic, Yasmina Silva and Zeddie

Two daughters, two mothers, one father, a cardboard cut-out and a foul-mouthed granny – a household at war with itself, and a family which will do anything to protect its' secrets. Behsharam (Shameless) follows second generation sisters, Jaspal and Sati, through the fantasies, dysfunctions and obsessions of their extraordinary extended family. Set in Birmingham, this is a bold, disturbing and at times hilarious exploration of the British Asian experience.