From Freedom Struggles to Fighter Jets—A Century of Love, Loss, and Laughter

The Last Jet-Engine Laugh by Ruchir Joshi is a bold, brilliant saga that hurtles through a hundred years of India’s evolution—from colonial protest to futuristic warfare—with irreverent wit and emotional depth.

In a near-future India, Para is a sharp-tongued, fearless fighter pilot flying missions against a hostile Pak-Saudi alliance. She is the product of a hyper-modern nation, trained to kill with precision and pride. But her story begins much earlier—with her idealistic grandparents, who fell in love while being trampled during a non-violent protest against British rule.

Between them lies the drifting, dreamlike figure of Paresh—Para’s father—caught between the past’s ideals and the present’s inertia, unsure of his place in a country galloping toward change.

Blending satire with sincerity, political commentary with personal drama, The Last Jet-Engine Laugh is a dazzling, genre-bending novel. Through biting humor and lyrical storytelling, Joshi explores how families—and nations—are shaped by memory, conflict, and the stories they choose to tell. Vivid, urgent, and wholly original, this is modern Indian fiction at its most fearless.