Novelist Devika Rege’s polyphonic debut chronicles India at a crossroads.

On this episode of Fully Booked, Devika Rege discusses her standout debut novel, Quarterlife (Liveright, Sept. 10)— “an ambitious, unusual, formally risky novel that attempts nothing less than a full-scale portrait of India circa 2014,” Kirkus writes in an enthusiastic review. Published in India in June 2023, Quarterlife was heralded as “a landmark novel” by the Indian Express and went on to win multiple awards there.

Born in Pune, India, Rege is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches at Azim Premji University in Bangalore.

Here’s more from our review of Quarterlife: “The book begins with three principals: Naren, a hard-charging management consultant who, in the opening scene, decides to leave the U.S. and return home to an India undergoing both rapid development and a surge of Hindu nationalism; Amanda, Naren’s white American college friend, who (in part to extricate herself from a romance that’s soured) accepts a teaching fellowship in a Muslim-majority slum; and Naren’s younger brother, Rohit, a filmmaker with whom Amanda gets involved. About a quarter of the way through, it opens out into something odder and more ambitious, incorporating many more characters, a more panoptic view of India on the cusp of becoming a world power. The book’s nearest American analogue is probably Tom Wolfe and his “social x-ray” novels: sprawling, multivocal, rococo in style, bristling at every seam with big ideas.…A promising first outing by a skilled writer.”

Rege and I begin by discussing India’s response to the publication of Quarterlife in 2023 and the excitement of bringing the book to U.S. readers this fall. We delve into the subjects she sought to explore in the novel, including rising Hindu nationalism and the political awakening of youth and young adults (“At its most basic, I’d say it’s a novel about young people finding their politics,” she says). We talk about the book’s three principal characters, Naren, Rohit, and Amanda. Rege shares a bit about how the novel evolved from three to nearly 40 characters, the research and care it took to give voice to so many diverse perspectives, and the importance of letting each character speak their truth.

Then editors Mahnaz Dar, John McMurtrie, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody by Patrick Ness, illus. by Tim Miller (Walker US/Candlewick)

The Rising: The Twenty-Year Battle To Rebuild the World Trade Center by Larry Silverstein (Knopf)

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty (Crown)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Paper Ghosts by Jesse Kalfel

Time-Marked Warlock by Shami Stovall

Doctor Lucifer by Anthony Lee

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.