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A Novel
by Devika Rege
India's literary novel of the year―an enthralling, award-winning debut from a "blazingly original voice" (Vauhini Vara).
"In the fashion of the big novels by Salman Rushdie or Amitav Ghosh" (Biblio), Quarterlife is a groundbreaking portrait of a nation on the cusp of a new age. When the Bharat Party comes to power after a divisive election, Naren, a jaded Wall Street consultant, is lured home to Mumbai. With him is Amanda, a restless New Englander eager to embody her ideals through a teaching fellowship in a Muslim-majority slum. Meanwhile, Naren's charismatic brother Rohit, an amateur filmmaker, sets out to explore his roots and befriends the fiery young men of the Hindu nationalist machine. Their journeys lead them into an astonishing milieu of brutal debates and infatuations as fraught as they are addictive, feeding into a festive night when all of Mumbai is on the streets―where the simmering unrest erupts. Hailed as "a landmark novel" (Indian Express), Quarterlife is a brilliantly innovative work that tests the limits of what the novel can achieve.
"Rege gamely tackles India's caste system and the elites' blasé response to the rising threat to minorities under the Bharat Party... she pulls off some beautiful and kaleidoscopic set pieces, such as her depiction of Ganeshotsav. Readers will want to keep an eye out for what Rege does next." ―Publishers Weekly
"An ambitious, unusual, formally risky novel that attempts nothing less than a full-scale portrait of India circa 2014. About a quarter of the way through, it opens out into something odder, incorporating many more characters, a more panoptic view of India on the cusp of becoming a world power. Rege is a talented young writer, finely attuned to the psychology of her characters...A promising first outing by a skilled writer." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Quarterlife promises to be an essential read for this moment in history." ―Literary Hub
"What a blazingly original voice, what a fiercely intelligent engagement with contemporary world politics and culture. Devika Rege is at the forefront of a new generation of authors who are challenging received notions of what transnational literature can do and remaking global literary culture in the process." ―Vauhini Vara, Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Immortal King Rao
"Dazzling, sophisticated, and wholly achieved in its ambition. .?.?. Devika Rege is a transformative novelist." ―Maureen McLane, author of More Anon
This information about Quarterlife was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Devika Rege was born in Pune, India, and lives in Bangalore. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell. Quarterlife is her debut novel.
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