'' Half Girlfriend' is the midway stage in a relationship, where two people are more than friends but not quite in a relationship yet,' he says. So what does Bhagat mean by the term Half Girlfriend? Riya didn’t … She agreed to be his half-girlfriend.” The video trailer for the book spells it out: “Madhav didn’t speak English well. “English is important for a country such as India, as that is one way for us to integrate with the world,” Bhagat says. With the book, Bhagat tries to echo the angst of millions of Indians who are denied jobs, can’t get into university or are simply not considered cool enough because their spoken English is weak. The elites laugh and sneer at their country cousins who are trying to learn English in India, and that is what Half Girlfriend is about.'

'A lot more people are in the English fold, but with varying levels of proficiency. “The new class divide is varying degrees of English. “It isn’t just the English versus Hindi class divide anymore,” says Bhagat, 40, ahead of the book’s international launch at the Sharjah International Book Fair on Friday. It tells the story of a boy from rural Bihar who doesn't speak much English and falls for a city-bred girl in one of Delhi's elite colleges – but she doesn't want to date him because of his lack of English proficiency. The English language forms the basis of a class divide in Half Girlfriend. His storytelling style is simple and easy to read – perfect for those who otherwise might never pick up an English-language book. His novels are mostly inhabited by urban India’s youth, who are trying to fulfil their ambitions while studying at engineering colleges or management schools or working in call centres, finding love along the way. But that's not surprising coming from the popular Indian author, who's known to attract first-time readers to English-language books in his home country. After six bestsellers, Chetan Bhagat's latest English novel, Half Girlfriend, is dedicated to the 'non-English types'.

Half girlfriend novel story