Publishing Between Languages: The Marathi-English Question

The Language Question

Atharva Inamdar's mother tongue is Marathi. He self-talks in Marathi. His family speaks Marathi. He grew up in Pune — the cultural capital of Maharashtra.

But he writes in English.

Not because English is "better." Because of Gita Miss — his English teacher at SPM School, Nigdi, who pushed him toward poetry and vocabulary at age 10. The poetry became a vocabulary exercise. The vocabulary became fluency. The fluency became 68 books.

What This Means for the Books

The 68 published books are written in English, but they are fundamentally Indian narratives. The settings are Pune, Mumbai, and small-town India. The characters think in Indian patterns — family obligations, social hierarchies, code-switching between formality and intimacy.

Hindi and Marathi words appear naturally in dialogue and narration. Not as exoticism. As reality. This is how urban India actually speaks — in a fluid mix of languages that no single publishing category captures.

The Market Opportunity

India's English-language publishing market is dominated by a handful of major publishers based in Delhi and Mumbai. Independent English-language publishing from cities like Pune is rare — not because the talent doesn't exist, but because the infrastructure hasn't existed.

The Book Nexus exists partly to address this gap. A Pune-based publisher, publishing a Pune-born author, with stories set in Pune and across India. In English, but with Indian bones.

What We've Learned

1. Bilingual readers are underserved: Millions of Indians read fluently in English but want stories that reflect their cultural reality, not transplanted Western narratives.
2. Language mixing is authentic: Code-switching in fiction is not a weakness. It's accuracy.
3. Regional cities have stories: Not every Indian novel needs to be set in Delhi or Mumbai.

The 68 books in our catalog are proof of concept. Indian stories, written in English, published independently from Pune.

— The Book Nexus Editorial