The Magnificent Ruins by Nayantara Roy (Hardcover)

Fiction - World Literature - India - Family Life - Women

RELEASE DATE: 11/12/2024 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

In this "rare feast" of a novel, a young Indian American book editor inherits her estranged family’s ancestral home–and their long-buried secrets (Rachel Lyon, author of Self-Portrait With Boy).

It is the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of an extended family that she thought she left behind sixteen years ago.   

Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement, and then there are her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom still live in the house, all of whom resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complicated, her first boyfriend seeks her out when she arrives, and her star author—and occasional lover—is suddenly determined to make things serious.    

As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence, and she must finally reckon with her inherited custom of keeping everything under the surface.  

Wise, witty, and deeply moving, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read and a stunning debut.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Nayantara Roy is a television executive at STARZ/ Lionsgate, where she oversees the acquisition and creative development of original scripted television series. Prior to STARZ, she worked at Endeavor Content series ( Normal People, Nine Perfect Strangers) and at AGBO, Joe and Anthony Russo's television studio. In 2018, Tara won the Rick Demarinis Short Story Prize for her short story, 8C. Originally from India, she is a 2020 alumni of the CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacific Executives in Entertainment) Leaders Program and at STARZ, is a jury member of the STARZ #TakeTheLead director's program, which is designed to create more directing opportunities for women and people of color. Her plays have been performed internationally, including at Prithvi Theater in Mumbai, India and Contact Theater, Manchester, UK. She lives in Silverlake, Los Angeles .

"A deliciously long book, The Magnificent Ruins is riveting from its first page to its last."-- BookPage

" The Magnificent Ruins gripped me from the first page and moved me to tears on the last. A wise, beautiful and haunting story about difficult mothers and daughters, the complications of family life, and redefining the meaning of home, this novel will stay close to my heart for a long, long time to come."-- Thrity Umrigar, bestselling author of Honor and The Museum of Failures

"Shakespearean in scope and cinematic in vision, The Magnificent Ruins is a rare feast of a novel about the power, burden, and gift of inheritances both concrete and intangible. I read it with hunger--absorbed by Lila De's story, invested in her family's dynamics, and craving complete immersion in the colors, flavors, and politics of the complex Kolkata they call home--and finished it utterly satisfied. Nayantara Roy writes as her heroine lives: with courage and devotion, intelligence and skill."-- Rachel Lyon, author of Fruit of the Dead and Self-Portrait with Boy

"Sharp-eyed and vividly detailed, Roy's debut explores secrets, shifting identities, the clash between tradition and modernity, and the overwhelming gravitational pull of family."-- Shelf Awareness