Endemol Shine options Indian novel ‘You Beneath Your Skin’

Damyanti Biswas

Endemol Shine India has optioned Damyanti Biswas’s crime novel You Beneath Your Skin to develop as a multi-part series.

Published by Simon & Schuster India in September 2019, the multi-strand story is set in modern day New Delhi and follows an Indian American single mother and her autistic teenage son, whose comfortable middle-class lives are turned upside down by a police investigation into a horrific crime spree targeting women living in slums.

All proceeds from the option are to be donated to social enterprises in the author’s native New Delhi.

Abhishek Rege, CEO of Endemol Shine India, said, “You Beneath your Skin is a crime thriller, layered with issues of poverty, misogyny and corruption. Taking a leaf out of the vast legacy of phenomenal women writers in the crime thriller genre – Damyanti’s book brings a sensitivity to an otherwise violent genre. The protagonist is fascinating as she is a single mother and traversing an unorthodox life through the rather orthodox setting of Delhi.

“Gripping, relevant and hard-hitting, this is a story peopled with many characters, multiple fractured relationships, small intimate moments and effective back stories. This is a thriller with a family at the center of the plot. These are the stories that Endemol Shine India wants to bring to the fore.”