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Sign up todayThe City of Devi
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Learn moreA dazzling, multilayered novel that not only encompasses a searing love story but—with its epic reach from quarks to mythology to geopolitics—also encapsulates the fate of the entire world.
As Mumbai empties under the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation, Sarita, a thirty-three-year-old statistician, can only think of one thing: being reunited with Karun, her physicist husband. Why has he vanished? Who is he running from? How will they form the family of three he's always wanted? To find him, Sarita must journey across the surreal landscape of a near-abandoned city, braving gangs of competing Hindu and Muslim hoodlums. Joining her is Jaz—nominally a Muslim but whose true religion has always been sex with other men. Danger lurks around every corner, but so does the incongruous and the absurd: the patron goddess Devi Ma has even materialized on a beach to save her city from harm. Sarita's search leads her to this beach, thrusting her into a trinity so mercurial, so consuming, that it will alter her life more fundamentally than any apocalypse to come.
Fearlessly provocative, wickedly comedic, and propelled with rocket-fuel energy, The City of Devi exuberantly upends assumptions of politics, religion, sex, and India's global emergence.
Manil Suri, a native of Mumbai, is a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is the author of The Death of Vishnu and the Age of Shiva, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
Vikas Adam is a classically trained actor with numerous credits in stage, film, commercials, and television, in addition to his over two hundred recorded audiobooks. His narrations have garnered numerous awards and nominations, including AudioFile Earphones Awards, various Best of the Year lists, and the prestigious Audie Award. He was an inaugural inductee into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame.
Priya Ayyar is an audiobook narrator, actor, and writer with a BFA and MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her acting credits for television and film include Law & Order: Criminal Intent, All My Children, and the documentary The Children of War. She has appeared on stage in War of the Unheard, Aminta, and The Road Home, and she has written and performed in the plays Karmic Fusion and Losing Remote Control.
Reviews
“Exuberant and sexy…When the world comes to an end, I will spend my last days in Mumbai clutching a copy of Manil Suri’s dazzling epic.”
“The novel is driven by love and hope…Suri’s dynamic, unabashed voice leaves one for the most part happily, perpetually off-balance.”
“Smartly and fluidly written. The strong plot and character development make the novel a page-turner, while insight into the taboos of interfaith and same-gender relationships in India and commentary on what true love really is add substance.”
“By daringly yoking erotic longing with terrorism in a trinitarian tale of amped-up mythology and end-of-world chaos, Suri forges an incendiary love story and provocative improvisation on India’s monumental epics.”
“Amid the wondrous variety of contemporary Indian fiction, Suri’s work stands apart, mingling comedy and death, eroticism and politics, godhood and Bollywood like no one else.”
“The City of Devi combines, in a magician’s feat, the thrill of Bollywood with the pull of a thriller. Set in a city at the brink of the end, this is a fiercely imagined story of three souls haunted by a love that will change their most elemental ideas of identity. Manil Suri’s bravest and most passionate book.”
While the explicit sexuality and violence may make some readers uncomfortable, Suri's work is nevertheless smartly and fluidly written. The strong plot and character development make the novel a page-turner, while insight into the taboos of interfaith and same-gender relationships in India and commentary on what true love really is add substance.
“By daringly yoking erotic longing with terrorism in a trinitarian tale of amped-up mythology and end-of-world chaos, Suri forges an incendiary love story and provocative improvisation on India’s monumental epics.”
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