We can all agree that the internet today, especially two particular platforms owned by the world’s greatest megalomaniacs, is a hellscape. But if you think X and Facebook are purgatories of friendless trolls endlessly posting hate and bullying women, each other and minorities under the guise of free speech, wait till you experience the Indian version of that netherworld, as captured by novelist and poet Meena Kandasamy. Take the worst algorithms in the world, add a billion-and-a-half people, mix in a far-right government with advanced internet skills and bring on the “burning ghats of Indian politics” that include caste and misogyny as well as roiling ethnic and religious antagonisms, and the western version of X begins to look like a children’s playground.

This is the world that Amy Chaturvedi, a posh student activist-communist living in London, wakes up to one day when the internet is set ablaze by a deepfake sex tape. It’s her face, but it’s not her. Don’t get her wrong, Amy is sexually unapologetic and proudly experimental; she has done plenty of transgressive things, she just didn’t do that one video. But try telling that to the Indian manosphere or, in fact, Amy’s mother. “The main aggressors are a disparate bunch of Nazi-loving, Islamophobic vegetarian dicks with profile pictures that are either the Joker or V for Vendetta,” Kandasamy writes. “If these trolls are to be believed, I am a leading member of the tukde-tukde gang of academics who want to balkanise India. I am on Pakistani payroll. I am funded by George Soros.” She nails the weaselly character of the Indian internet troll, exposing all their shameful secrets – their failures with women, their desire to be followed by Prime Minister Modi (it’s a real thing, look it up), their fear of Muslims, and their rage. Kandasamy’s sharp humour provides much-needed relief from the anger of the internet and I found myself laughing many times at her wicked, tart observations.

The author, whose powerful novel about an abusive relationship with a charismatic man, When I Hit You, was shortlisted for the Women’s prize, is a master of blurring the lines between fiction and real life. In Amy Chaturvedi, she uses one woman’s story to encapsulate the ways in which women are hunted and attacked online. Rough, coarse and often unsympathetic, living in a bubble of her own privilege and obliviousness, Amy could be the internet’s perfect victim. She’s fixated on her looks, class and power to shock by embracing her sexuality. She also uses the moment of her global digital violation to wonder if she is in love with her best friend, alienating her more than she already has done. She sleeps with the boyfriend of a drippy white acquaintance who has offered her sympathy and shelter (in a rage, the acquaintance throws her #REFUGEESWELCOME placard at Amy). She is beautiful and desired. And the internet takes a vengeful, deliberate pleasure in shaming and humiliating her.

Kandasamy is one of India’s most exciting writers precisely because she doesn’t pull any punches – on the contrary, she really packs them in. “What do you label a closet Andrew Tate who worships Modi and only talks about ‘India Hindu again’?” Amy asks, knowing full well the answer. You’d call him an incel. But he’d have to be white in order to be pathologised in such a neat and tidy way. While India’s media landscape has largely retreated in the face of the Hindu right’s fascism, Kandasamy is one of the few consistently at the barricades. The novel could have done with less Marxist praxis schmraxis – I’m not sure deepfakes need a dialectic – and there was a lot of internet language, which perhaps we are a little oversaturated with already, iykyk, imo. Otherwise, the personal and the political are blended in all their twisted forms, and I know that I am among many fans who can’t wait to see what Kandasamy does next.