Quarterlife

Winner of the 2024 MATHRUBHUMI BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD and the 2024 RAMNATH GOENKA SAHITYA SAMAAN AWAWRD FOR BEST DEBUT FICTION / Shortlisted for the 2023 ATTA GALATTA PRIZE FOR FICTION and the 2023 KALINGA LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION
'An ambitious reckoning' Guardian
'Quarterlife is a revelation . . . and deserves the widest attention' Observer
'A fearless achievement' The New Yorker
The Bharat Party has come to power after an intensely divisive election. Naren, a jaded Wall Street consultant, is lured home to Mumbai by their promise of ' better days '. With him is Amanda, eager to escape her New England town by volunteering in a Muslim-majority slum. Inspired by them, Naren's charismatic brother Rohit sets out to explore his ancestral heritage in the countryside, where he falls in with the -ery young men who drive the Hindu nationalist machine.
As they each come to grips with the new India, their journeys coalesce into a riveting milieu characterized by brutal debates and desires as fraught as they are compulsive. The result is an ever-widening chorus that feeds into a festive night when all of Mumbai is on the streets - and the simmering unrest erupts.
Quarterlife is as sweeping as it is intimate. With profound empathy and insight, Devika Rege lays bare the roots of political belief in a time of reckoning for democracies worldwide - this is a brilliantly innovative work that tests the limits of what the novel can achieve.
'Powerful, demanding, rewarding' Daily Mail
'Rege is at the forefront of a new generation of authors' Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao
'Utterly masterful and moving' Gauri Gill, author of Acts of Appearance

Devika Rege