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Product Description
A dazzling, multilayered novel that not only encompasses a searing love story but, with its epic reach, encapsulates the fate of the world. Mumbai has emptied under the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation; gangs of marauding Hindu and Muslim thugs rove the desolate streets; yet Sarita can think of only one thing: buying the last pomegranate that remains in perhaps the entire city. She is convinced that the fruit holds the key to reuniting her with her physicist husband, Karun, who has been mysteriously missing for more than a fortnight.
Searching for his own lover in the midst of this turmoil is Jazcocky, handsome, and glib. 'The Jazter,' as he calls himself, is Muslim, but his true religion has steadfastly been sex with men. Dodging danger at every step, both he and Sarita are inexorably drawn to Devi ma, the patron goddess who has reputedly appeared in person to save her city. What they find will alter their lives more fundamentally than any apocalypse to come.
A wickedly comedic and fearlessly provocative portrayal of individuals balancing on the sharp edge of fate, The City of Devi brilliantly upends assumptions of politics, religion, and sex, and offers a terrifying yet exuberant glimpse of the end of the world.
From Booklist
During their awkward courtship, physicist Karun tells statistician Sarita about an alternative vision of the Hindu triumvirate in which Brahman is replaced with the mother goddess Devi. This trinity just so happens to match the novels in Suri's now completed trilogy: The Death of Vishnu (2001), The Age of Shiva (2008), and The City of Devi. So frenetic, concussive, and flagrantly explicit is this on-target, apocalyptic urban satire, Suri can stand as the Tom Wolfe of Mumbai. First the city is bewitched by a futuristic Bollywood extravaganza, Superdevi. Then war breaks out between Pakistan and India, the nuclear threat escalates, Hindu and Muslim vigilantes menace the populace, and Devi herself appears at a beach resort, drawing a frenzied crowd. Yet Sarita is determined to cross the perilous city-in-ruins to search for her husband. Jaz'gay, Muslim, self-mocking, impish, and resolute'is also on a risk-all quest of the heart. By daringly yoking erotic longing with terrorism in a trinitarian tale of amped-up mythology and end-of-world chaos, Suri forges an incendiary love story and provocative improvisation on India's monumental epics. --Donna Seaman
About the Author
Manil Suri is the best-selling author of The Death of Vishnu, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and The Age of Shiva. A native of Mumbai, he is a professor of mathematics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Review
'The best sex comedy of the year about nuclear war between India and Pakistan...Even amid the wondrous variety of contemporary Indian fiction, Suri's work stands apart, mingling comedy and death, eroticism and politics, godhood and Bollywood like no one else.'
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Ron Charles, Washington Post

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The City of Devi combines, in a magician's feat, the thrill of Bollywood with the pull of a thriller. Set in a city at the brink of the end, this is a fiercely imagined story of three souls haunted by a love that will change their most elemental ideas of identity. Manil Suri's bravest and most passionate book.'
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Kiran Desai

'
The City of Devi is so exuberant and sexy, one may wish to purchase a prophylactic alongside it. When the world comes to an end, I will spend my last days in Mumbai clutching a copy of Manil Suri's dazzling epic.'
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Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story and Absurdistan

'With comedic flashes and a plot that pulses forward, Suri's tale solidifies the re