Sour Fruit

Ahana Virdi

304 pages April 2026 Copies in English Literary Fiction

Represented by Cara Lee Simpson

An all-consuming, provocative debut novel about sex, grief and hunger, for fans of BUTTER and BOY PARTS

“Feverish, devouring and provocative, Sour Fruit is an all-consuming and stunningly vulgar novel about sex and personhood. Ahana Virdi writes the kind of unflinching desire that leaves us raw, unsettled, and utterly captivated. Carnal and vile.”—Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb

Love can really eat you up…

Avni is done with the meaningless carousel of tame sex. Tender women repel her. Clumsy men disgust her. She wants to make her flesh electric; to fill the chasm inside her created by her mundane job, her ex who died in a bizarre tragedy, and her sick aunt, whose diseased brain is swallowing memories.

Then there’s the sour fruit, the bad meat that she craves. She longs for something to make her feel full. Something beyond all the pointless sex and depravity.

When she is sucked into the orbit of a couple who seem as unstitched as she is, Avni thinks she may have found what she is looking for. But each time she fulfils her darkest needs her appetite grows, and she begins to spiral into obsession.

There’s that bone-deep ache again. Is it love? Or a different kind of hunger?

Uncompromising, unique and compulsively readable, Sour Fruit is the fearless debut of a major new talent.