One of The New Yorker‘s Best Books of 2024
‘A fearless achievement’ The New Yorker
‘Blazingly original . . . Fiercely intelligent . . . Rege is at the forefront of a new generation of authors’ Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao
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 fiery 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.
‘A fearless achievement’ The New Yorker
‘Blazingly original . . . Fiercely intelligent . . . Rege is at the forefront of a new generation of authors’ Vauhini Vara, author of The Immortal King Rao
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 fiery 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.
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Reviews
What begins as a novel of ideas becomes the secret history of a nation. A superb read . . . Both moving and inspiring.
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.
Dazzling, sophisticated and wholly achieved in its ambition, Quarterlife emerges out of the tradition of the philosophical novel. Devika Rege is a transformative novelist.
Finally, a novel about our roiling times by a writer of clear-eyed empathy, the ability to listen closely and to step out of cosmopolitan cocoons. Utterly masterful and moving.
In the fashion of the big novels by Salman Rushdie or Amitav Gosh
A landmark novel . . . Rege has a vast descriptive repertoire, is willing to take astonishing risks with structure, and is immaculate in her numerous interiority dives. Her hand is so sure, it's often impossible to believe that Quarterlife is a debut.
What's especially exciting is the freshness in Rege's turn of phrase - the rhythm in her sentences feels new, and marks the arrival of a voice we have not heard before in Indian literature in English.
Bears witness to an extraordinary moment in history and does not let you look away either. An elegant, ambitious debut . . . a testament to the clarity truth can gain from craft.
One of the best character-driven novels out in India this year: this is wholly about how people think, how their perceptions shape their behaviour, and how those perceptions may change.
A contemporary novel that cohesively sketches the expanse of India's social and political landscape with acute clarity . . . An easy five stars.
Quarterlife is that rare novel that dares to speak differently . . . Ambitious this novel certainly is, but its boldness is backed by Rege's unmistakable commitment to storytelling and her sheer talent for it.
The scope of the book's ideas and the textured rendering of its characters contribute an oceanic feeling of simultaneous scale and intimacy . . . By a distance the best debut of the year.
The literary equivalent of a Diego Rivera mural . . . Quarterlife is an essential work of fiction . . . It is one of the most ambitious literary works to come out in years.
With such brutality to contend with, it is almost shocking to find such delicacy of attention, such depth of listening, and such ability to hold us, simply and directly, with wisdom and with grief.
Quarterlife should be read by anyone seeking to understand the political and social tensions at work in twenty-first-century India . . . Rege's imaginative sympathy includes voices and perspectives that a lesser novelist would discount.
A fearless achievement . . . An urgent, vital orchestration . . . [Rege's] seriousness of purpose runs like an electrical wire through the book . . . Its classic amplitude of form allows for the slow and steady examination not only of illiberal voices but also, more interestingly, of a variety of quasi-liberal ones . . . Rege belittles none of these voices as she sets them at play and, finally, at war.
Quarterlife is a deeply intelligent social novel, its characters both singularly interesting individuals and vectors of cultural and political forces beyond their grasp.