Kishwar Desai

Kishwar Desai's debut novel, Witness the Night, won the 2010 Costa First Novel Award for its expose of one of India's darkest secrets, the killing of baby girls either just after birth or in abortions because of a cultural fixation on having a male child.

She estimates that over the years millions of baby girls and foetuses have died in what she calls "gendercide" or infanticide. Her book tells the story of a teenage girl accused of killing her family, whose story is investigated by a social worker-turned detective.

"It was written in a great rage within a month," she says. The book is a novel but she says: "There was nothing invented in this book. I just wove events and stories in to a single narrative."

She knows of one Indian village that had only recorded the birth of a single girl in the past 100 years. There's no coincidence about this. All the other baby girls were murdered. But this is not a crime that is investigated. It's tolerated in Indian society, swept under the carpet. Sometimes it takes a novel to make a difference. I hope this one does.

Oh yes, the Blipfoto: Kishwar talked about her novel during an evening she spent with us at the Hurst, Clunton, Shropshire, run by the Arvon Foundation.