She Will Build Him a City
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
As night falls in Delhi, a mother spins tales from her past for her sleeping daughter. Now grown up, her child is a puzzle with a million pieces, whom she hopes, through her words and her love, to somehow make whole again.
Meanwhile, a young man rides the last train from Rajiv Chowk Station and dreams of murder.
In another corner of the city, a newborn wrapped in a blood-red towel lies on the steps of an orphanage as his mother walks away.
There are twenty million bodies in this city, but the stories of this woman, man, and child--of a secret love that blossoms in the shadows of grief, of a corrosive guilt that taints the soul, and of a boy who maps his own destiny--weave in and out of the lives of those around them to form a dazzling kaleidoscope of a novel.
Beautiful, beguiling, and audacious, this is the story of a city and its people, of love and horror, of belonging and forgiveness: a powerful and unforgettable tale of modern India.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jha (Fireproof) constructs a surreal study of the longing and loneliness of three nameless characters in a world that shifts between menacing and romantic, comical and violent, demonic and endearing. Woman is confronted with her daughter's sudden return home; Man comes undone in a nightmarish descent into desire and violence; and Child, an abandoned baby boy, is adored by a TB-stricken nurse and sheltered by a contingent of animals and spirits. The return of Woman's daughter exposes secrets hidden after the death of Woman's husband and the daughter's heartbreaking grief and disastrous affair. "Whatever happened to me... whatever happens to us from now on doesn't matter to anyone except us," Woman says about her reunion with her daughter. Yet their reconciliation is linked by a cascade of unintended consequences to Child's uncertain future, which triggers the desires and dreams of everyone around him, and Man's erotic, murderous obsession with a "Balloon Girl." Jha's dense, evocative tales of urban India are mesmerizing and magical.
