Vidya Balan is not like any other film actress and star. She is one of those rare independent thinking individuals who live by their convictions alone. She chooses roles in films she can personally relate to, irrespective of banners, names, and the money on offer. This is her approach to life. She follows it in other spheres as well. If she finds strong reasons to support or promote a cause, activity or even a book, she goes all out to do so.

An SMS request by Munmun Ghosh, the author of the novel UNHOOKED, sent to Vidya set the ball rolling this time. As is Vidya's nature, she wanted to read the novel first. The author promptly sent the book to her and Vidya read it and had high praise for it. She said 'yes' to the request to launch the book and read excerpts from it. And she will be doing this out of her pure love for good literature and her conviction in the substance of the novel. She spoke to Ghosh quite candidly about why she loved the book and would be happy to be associated with its launch.

Says Vidya Balan about the book: "I loved UNHOOKED... In a certain sense, I identified with the book, not just through my personal experiences, but with what I have watched of people around me, especially girls in the media and the metros, whom I interact with all the time. There's so much pressure today on girls to have boyfriends. People look at you as if you are diseased if you don't have one. And you are made to feel depressed on special days. I have gone through it too."

Vidya Balan will now be the star attraction at the launch and reading of UNHOOKED at Landmark Bookstore, Infinity Mall, Versova, Andheri (W), Mumbai, on 5th October 2012 (Friday), at 6.30 PM. The one-hour event will see her reading excerpts from the book and talking to the media and the public about its subject.

UNHOOKED is the second novel by Munmun Ghosh, who worked as a full-fledged journalist with prestigious newspapers and publications before turning to creative writing. HUSHED VOICES, her first novel that was published in 2005 delved into the lives of the marginalized classes of Mumbai. In UNHOOKED, she explores the metro phenomenon of intellectual mating between the sexes and its repercussions. The novel's protagonist woos the men she fancies with words alone, determined to lose her virginity to that man alone who commits. Noted writer and journalist Shobhaa De has commended the book as 'an unblinking view of the contemporary concerns that confront thirty-something career women looking for love, but not necessarily sex.'