The City of Devi

Description

Armed only with a pomegranate, Sarita ventures into the empty streets of Mumbai, on the eve of its threatened nuclear annihilation. She is looking for her physicist husband Karun, who has been missing for over a fortnight. She is soon joined on her quest by Jaz - cocky, handsome, Muslim, gay, and in search of his own lover. Together they traverse the surreal landscape of a dystopia rife with absurdity, and are inexorably drawn to the patron goddess Devi ma, the supposed saviour of the city. Groundbreaking and multilayered, The City of Devi is a fearlessly provocative tale of three individuals balancing on the sharp edge of fate.

Manil Suri was born in Bombay in 1959 and is a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has written two novels, The Death of Vishnu and The Age of Shiva. His fiction has been translated into twenty-seven languages, longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award, LA Times Book Award, PEN/Hemingway Award and the W H Smith Literary Award, and has won the McKittrick Prize and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. He was named by Time magazine as a 'Person to Watch' in 2000. He lives in Maryland, USA. @ManilSuri

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 * Kiran Desai * Consuming, passionate, and ultimately poignant story -- Nikita Lalwani * Guardian * An extravagant, and warm-hearted romantic comedy ... Arranged around various trinities ... Suri's novel is written in vivid, cornucopian prose * Sunday Times * A provocative fantasy from prestigious Indian author Suri * Attitude Magazine * This vividly imagined book about personal and national destruction - and the possibilities of salvation - lingers long after the final page, showing how it is loss that teaches the value of what is most loved -- Anita Sethi * Independent * The City of Devi, which will surely cement his reputation as one of the most imaginative writers of our time ... Suri creates a mesmerising novel that is impossible to put down * Yorkshire Post * Apocalyptic fables may be routine in the West, but Suri's novel of ruined Mumbai on the eve of destruction strikes a fresh note in Indian fiction ... Ancient myths and modern fears fuse with explosive results' * Independent * Suri's gods are subversive, malignant characters, exploited to inspire fear and revulsion ... This mixture of sex, mythology and global politics might seem likely to end in disaster, but Suri has reined in the strands admirably. The author is also a mathematician, and his sense of order is evident, even as his story bursts with high-octane, Bollywood-style drama -- Chitralekha Basu * Times Literary Supplement *