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 Violentand contains some of the best fiction and non-fiction that has been written on the violence that permeates everyayer of Indian society. Rising out of faultines of religion, caste, gender,anguage, class and geopolitics, this brutality has scarred the country for centuries now. The writers who feature in this volume are Khushwant Singh, Mahasweta Devi, Udayan Ghosh, Anna Bhau Sathe, Manoj Mitta, Harvinder Singh Phoolka, Salam Bin Razzaq, Suketu Mehta, Vijaydan Detha, Sonia Faleiro, Barkha Dutt, Shahnaz Bashir and Sanjoy Hazarika.