Devourers

"For readers of Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, China Mieville, and David Mitchell comes a striking debut novel by a storyteller of keen insight and captivating imagination. On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man's unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger's behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins. From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. The tale features a rough wanderer in seventeenth-century Mughal India who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant woman--and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing worlds. With every passing chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok's interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent. Shifting dreamlike between present and past with intoxicating language, visceral action, compelling characters, and stark emotion, The Devourers offers a reading experience quite unlike any other novel. Advance praise for The Devourers "A wholly original, primal tale of love, violence, and transformation. I've never read anything quite like it."--Pierce Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Red Rising Trilogy "Astonishing. a narrative that takes possession of you and pulls you along in its wake."--M. R. Carey, author of The Girl with All the Gifts "Intense and thrilling. Indra Das's writing is powerful and precise."--Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Red Mars "Every sentence of this ferocious and extraordinary book pulses with life. An absolute masterpiece."--Daniel Jose Older, author of Half-Resurrection Blues "The Devourers tears the throat out of the traditional shapeshifter tale. With a story that spans cultures, generations, and mythologies, and characters that make your heart both pound and ache, this book will leave you breathless. You've never read anything like it, and you won't forget it anytime soon."--Mallory O'Meara, filmmaker"--

"A dreamlike novel about a young historian and a persuasive and beguiling stranger coming together in modern-day Kolkata, India to transcribe an ancient journal. A collection of paper, parchment, and skins, the journal tells of bloodshed, kidnapping, magic and shapeshifting, set against the harsh landscapes of the 17th-Century Mughal Empire. It reveals the story of hunters and prey, lovers and the beloved, and, in the end, the choice to be transformed, or be quarry"--