One of the meanings of the word ‘olio’ is ‘a miscellany’. The books in the Aleph Olio series contain a mélange of the finest writing to be had on a variety of Indian themes—the great cities, aspects of Indian culture and civilization, uniquely Indian phenomena. Filled with insights and haunting evocations of a country of unrivalled complexity, beauty, tragedy and mystery, each Aleph Olio book presents India in ways that it has seldom been seen before. In a Violent Land contains some of the best fiction and non-fiction that has been written on the violence that permeates every layer of Indian society. Rising out of fault lines of religion, caste, gender, language, class and geopolitics, this brutality has scarred the country for centuries now.