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	Quarterlife: A Novel by Devika Rege Price $29.99 Hardcover Special Order

Devika Rege at Harvard Book Store

presenting

Quarterlife: A Novel

in conversation with James Wood

Date

Oct

Tuesday
October 1, 2024
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes Devika Rege—winner of the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Award and the Ramnath Goenka Sahitya Samman for Best Fiction—for a discussion of her debut novel Quarterlife. She will be joined in conversation by James Wood— staff writer at The New Yorker and Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University.

About Quarterlife

“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.

Praise for Quarterlife

"Quarterlife promises to be an essential read for this moment in history." -Literary Hub

"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

Masking Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

Devika Rege

Devika Rege’s debut novel Quarterlife is a political bildungsroman set in a time of rising Hindu nationalism. It was hailed as ‘a landmark novel’ by The Indian Express and a best book of the year by over a dozen publications on its release in South Asia. It also won the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Award and the Ramnath Goenka Sahitya Samman for Best Fiction, and was a finalist for the Atta Galatta Prize and Kalinga Literary Award. It will be published in the USA and elsewhere in 2024.

James Wood

James Wood is a staff writer at The New Yorker and Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University. He is the author of How Fiction Works, as well as the essay collections, Serious Noticing, The Broken Estate and The Irresponsible Self, and the novels, The Book Against God and Upstate.

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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General Info
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