It was because of the repressive attitude towards reading in her secondary school that Balli Kaur Jaswal blossomed. Reading for entertainment (particularly anything related to relationships) was frowned upon back then, so the novelist decided to tell tales that needed to be told. Dysfunctional families, mental health issues, homosexuality and racial prejudices are common themes throughout her books, and her first one, Inheritance, won the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelist Award in 2014. Her third novel, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, earned her a six-figure deal with HarperCollins that allowed her to give up teaching in Istanbul and return to Singapore for a full-time writing career. The novel is also being made into a film, with movie rights already having been sold to Alien director Ridley Scott’s production company, Scott Free Productions, and the UK’s Film4.