The Snares

THE TIMES THRILLER OF THE MONTH

Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize

'Rav Grewal-Kök's literary thriller illustrates the consequences of naivety in public life, and the impossibility of reconciling duty and conscience' The Times

'Rav Grewal-Kök's intriguing novel seems intent on unsettling us from its opening pages, with coolly precise prose that sneaks nimbly around the periphery of its characters' darkest thoughts and actions' New York Times

'Grewal-Kök creates a layered and subtle narrative that looks at questions of identity, choice, and morality... The Snares will keep you turning the pages as quickly as any thriller' Studies in Intelligence, the CIA's academic journal

An eye-opening meditation on morality, violence, and the price of a human soul.

While America is still reeling from the events of September 11th, Neel Chima is recruited into a new, ruthless federal intelligence agency - eager to seek revenge for their recent tragedy.

Neel soon finds himself intimately involved in the selection of foreigners for drone assassination - men who often look just like his Sikh family members.

As both his ambitions and his moral qualms mount, he is drawn farther and farther away from his wife and two young daughters. When he makes a critical mistake at work, he is left vulnerable to shadowy figures in the intelligence world who seek to use him in their own, still more radical counterterrorism missions.

Is Neel an insider or an outsider? The hunter or the hunted? An idealist or a mercenary? What truths, and whose lives, is he willing to sacrifice?