Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Deepti Kapoor, Tracey Rose Peyton, V. V. Ganeshananthan, and more—that are publishing this week.
Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about Age of Vice: “In Kapoor’s searing portrait of India at the turn of the 21st century (after A Bad Character), finely wrought characters go to great lengths to escape the bonds into which they were born. Ajay, from a desperately poor family and sold into servitude by his mother at eight in 1991, begins working for Sunny Wadia, an unhappy playboy and scion of a powerful family, in 2001. Sunny’s father, Bunty, and mysterious uncle Vicky hold sway over whole swaths of the Indian economy and political landscape. Neda Kapur is a cynical journalist first drawn to Sunny by a corruption story she is writing, but is soon caught in the vortex of Sunny’s lavish lifestyle of endless parties, drugs, and conspicuous consumption facilitated by the ever-present Ajay. Sunny dreams of creating new cities and carving a new path for himself, but he is emasculated by his father’s hold on the family’s empire. As Sunny and his friends’ behavior becomes increasingly reckless, Ajay is made a scapegoat for a shocking fatal car accident, and Neda witnesses in full the ethical morass upon which the Wadias’ success is built. Kapoor’s violent and bitter story is deeply addictive; this spellbinder would be easy to devour in one big gulp, but it’s worth savoring for Neda’s uncompromising take on what she terms India’s ‘losing age, the age of vice.’ The author possesses a talent great enough to match the massive scope of her subject.”
Night Wherever We Go by Tracey Rose Peyton
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about Night Wherever We Go: “Peyton’s powerful if uneven debut unfurls on a floundering Texas plantation in the years leading up to the Civil War. Six Black women are enslaved to a white family, the Harlows, whom the women refer to as ‘the Lucys’ (as in Lucifer). Among the enslaved are Patience, Nan, and Serah, and a chunk of the novel is conveyed in first-person plural as they’re forced by the Lucys to breed with traveling ‘stockman’ Zeke. Nan, trained in medicines, helps the others avoid pregnancy via herbal treatments, and after a second failed attempt, Zeke never returns. The women also sneak away from the plantation at night for clandestine gatherings, and, at one of them, Serah falls for Noah, a worker at a neighboring farm who longs to escape to Mexico. Meanwhile, the Lucys purchase two men, Monroe and Isaac, whom they marry to Serah and Patience, hoping they’ll provide offspring to sell off. As a meditation on motherhood and bodily autonomy, this mostly succeeds, particularly in the novel’s closing chapters, yet the author’s choice to frequently shift perspective from the women to an omniscient narrator doesn’t quite work. Still, it’s clear Peyton has much talent to burn.”
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about The Bandit Queens: “In Shroff’s acerbic debut, a woman helps other women escape their abusive marriages in their small village in India, often through murder. Geeta’s unearned reputation for having killed her physically abusive husband, Ramesh (he’s not dead, he just ran off), prompts women to approach her for help. It’s a fortuitous development for Geeta, who’s become socially isolated after a fight with her lifelong friend Saloni, who’s part of the microloan group that funds Geeta’s jewelry business. As well, Geeta admires the legendary Bandit Queen, who exacted revenge on those who’d wronged her, and agrees to help a local named Farah kill her husband (Farah’s first attempt backfired because she mistook hair growth pills for sleeping pills). Geeta also connects with widower Karem, a bootlegger, though not before costing him his livelihood by putting a stop to Karem’s biggest buyer, Bada-Bhai (Bada-Bhai was cutting the booze with methanol and testing it on dogs, and Geeta frees the dogs). After Geeta adopts Bada-Bhai’s sickest dog, whom she names Bandit, she begins allowing others into her life, including Saloni, which helps after Ramesh resurfaces. Shroff deals sharply with misogyny and abuse, describing the misery inflicted as well as its consequences in unflinching detail, and is equally unsparing in her depictions of mean-girl culture in the village. Readers are in for a razor-stuffed treat.”
The Thing in the Snow by Sean Adams
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about The Thing in the Snow: “Workers try to hold onto their sanity as they maintain a desolate, snow-covered research station in Adams’s dryly funny absurdist latest (after The Heap). Each week, a remote administrator named Kay assigns a meaningless task to Hart, the on-site manager at the obsolete Northern Institute, for Hart to accomplish with his subordinates Gibbs and Cline, their employer having deemed it more cost-effective to keep the place running than to close it down. The crew spends their time testing the noisiness of doors and the stability of chairs, and doing their best to avoid Gilroy, the sole remaining researcher (according to Hart, Gilroy is the type who, when encountered, elicits ‘distaste [that] is not just warranted, it is the correct evolutionary response’). One day, the men spot something in the snow. The distraction annoys Hart, who views the development as a threat to his already tenuous leadership. After Gibbs reports the object to Kay, Kay replies, ‘if immobile, not of concern.’ Consequently, the crew members become irrationally convinced that the barely perceptible object is moving. The workplace gags are effective, and as the workers turn on one another, things really take off. The strange blend of satire, mystery, and psychological thrills make for a winning combination.”
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan
Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about Brotherless Night: “Ganeshananthan (Love Marriage) offers a searing and intimate depiction of the Sri Lankan civil war from the point of view of an aspiring doctor. In 1981, 15-year-old Sashi Kulenthiren is studying for her A Levels. Her father, a civil servant, works far from their home in Jaffna, leaving her, her mother, and four brothers on their own. After not earning high enough marks to enroll in medical school, Sashi nevertheless continues her studies. While living with her grandmother and older brother, Niranjan, growing separatist sentiment among the northern Tamils leads to riots, and Niranjan disappears. Later, Sashi wins admittance to medical school and there is recruited by her childhood neighbor and crush, K, to work in the makeshift infirmary for the cadres, and two of her brothers join the Tigers. Sashi also finds a mentor in Anjali, a former Tiger supporter who encourages her to start a feminist reading group. As both the Tigers and the Indian peacekeepers commit atrocities, and Sashi’s non-Tiger younger brother is detained by the government, she juggles an increasingly grueling schedule and her family urges her to immigrate to England. Ganeshananthan credibly captures the horrors and pain of the conflict felt by those caught between loyalties. It all makes for a convincing and illuminating war novel.”
