Skip to main content
What's on /

Folger Book Club:
Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma

Our November book club selection is a contemporary romance adaptation of Taming of the Shrew set in a New Jersey South Asian community.

Booking and details

Register

Dates Thu, Nov 7, 2024, 6:30pm

Venue Folger Virtual

Tickets Free, Registration required

Duration 6:30pm - 8:00pm (ET)

Our November 2024 Pick

Dating Dr. Nil
by Nisha Sharma

Kareena Mann dreams of having a love story like her parents, but she prefers restoring her classic car to swiping right on dating apps. When her father announces he’s selling her mother’s home, Kareena makes a deal with him: he’ll gift her the house if she can get engaged in four months. Her search for her soulmate becomes impossible when her argument with Dr. Prem Verma, host of The Dr. Dil Show, goes viral. Now the only man in her life is the one she doesn’t want.

Dr. Prem Verma is dedicated to building a local community health center, but he needs to get donors with deep pockets. The Dr. Dil Show was doing just that, until his argument with Kareena went viral, and he’s left short changed. That’s when Kareena’s meddling aunties presented him with a solution: convince Kareena he’s her soulmate and they’ll fund his clinic.

Even though they have conflicting views on love-matches and arranged-matches, the more time Prem spends with Kareena, the more he begins to believe she’s the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. But for Prem and Kareena to find their happily ever after, they must admit that hate has turned into fate.

Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma

Why did we choose this?

The Folger Shakespeare Library’s collection explores not only Shakespeare’s life and works, but also the plays’ historical context, source material, critical and performance histories, and the ways in which they inspire and are adapted by contemporary novelists.

An increasingly popular genre, romance has been gaining in critical attention and readership in recent years as well as diversifying the types of love stories being told. Dating Dr. Dil sets Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew within a South Asian community in New Jersey, exploring ideas around familial obligation and cultural pressures.

About the Book Club

Our informal Book Club is free and open to all. Our picks range from historical fiction to adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, encompassing a wide variety of genres—all sourced from a different local, independent bookstore partner each month.

Each session begins with a guest speaker exploring that month’s pick and highlighting items from the Folger collection related to the plot and themes of the novel. After the presentation, participants will be broken into smaller groups for breakout discussions, moderated by a team of staff and volunteers.

Content transparency

Dating Dr. Dil includes explicit sexual material.

Guest Speaker

Anandi Rao

Anandi Rao

Busboys and Poets

We would like to thank the following organization for its generous support of this program

Junior League of Washington