Join us on February 7th at 5:30 as we host Nayantara Roy, who will be in conversation with Bedatri Datta Choudhury to discuss her latest, The Magnificent Ruins.
About the book:
At 29, Lila is a rising publishing executive in Brooklyn when she learns that she has inherited her family’s enormous ancestral home in Kolkata — along with the secrets that lie within— in this sweeping multi-generational debut
It is the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career as an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of a complicated extended family that she thought she left behind 16 years ago.
Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement, and then there is her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom still live in the house, all of whom resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complex, one man follows Lila to India while another has been waiting for her return, a long time.
As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence, and she must finally reckon with her inherited custom of sweeping everything under the surface.
For fans of Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes and the novels of Vikram Seth, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read.
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