To Mars and Back: A Novel

India goes to Mars. Five astronauts go with it. One carries a secret older than civilisation.

India - the country that sent a spacecraft to Mars for less than the budget of a Hollywood film about Mars - decides to send actual humans there and bring them back. Commander Arjun Krishnamurthy leads a crew of five through twenty months of radiation storms, dust storms, a fuel crisis, and coffee that never improves. They discover evidence of ancient life on Mars, but the mission's greatest discovery is within the crew: one of them carries a secret older than civilisation. Grounded in real science and told with the warm wit of a country that breaks coconuts before rocket launches, this is a novel about leaving home, doing the impossible on an insufficient budget, and discovering that the universe is far less lonely than it pretends to be.

Published

2026

Format

Hardcover

Length

486 pages

ISBN

9798907227002