Gods and Ends

SHORTLISTED FOR JCB PRIZE FOR LITERATURE TATA LIT LIVE FIRST BOOK (FICTION) AWARDONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL LITERARY DEBUTS IN 2021 AN UNFLINCHING PORTRAIT OF A ROMAN CATHOLIC COMMUNITY IN THE BOMBAY SUBURB OF ORLEMA DARK STORY OF CHARACTERS GRAPPLING WITH LOVE LOSS AND SIN'Gods and Ends is an intriguing debut with Lindsay's biting sense of humour and quirky voice. Part of the attraction lies in its unconventional form and structure.'-Jury JCB Prize for Literature 2021 'Vivid and unsentimental a striking debut in the lineage of Naipaul and Nagarkar'-Anjali Joseph Author of Saraswati Park '...savagely drawn series of sketches...'- Jerry Pinto author of Em and the Big Hoom '...a class apart...'- Altaf Tyrewala author of No God in Sight The Ministry of Hurt Sentiments'...one of the bitingly humorous voices from India...'- Jaideep Varma author and National Award-winning director of Leaving Home Philomena Sequeira knows what she wants by the time she turns fourteen. Her father wants something else.Life is unyielding for the tenants of the rundown Obrigado Mansion in Orlem a Roman Catholic parish in suburban Bombay. They grapple with love loss and sin surrounded by abused wives and repressed widows alcoholic husbands and dubious evangelists angry teenagers and ambivalent priests all struggling to make sense of circumstances they have no control over.Gods and Ends takes up multiple threads of individual stories to create a larger picture of darkness beneatha seemingly placid surface. It is about intersecting lives struggling to accept change as homes turn into prisons. This is a book about invisible people in a city of millions and the claustrophobia they rarely manage to escape from. Review With an insider's familiarity Lindsay Pereira presents brutally honest vignettes of Mumbai's Roman Catholic community ―The HinduPereira's writing is stark in its simplicity. He uses dialogue and narration with good effect giving each character enough space to tell their story. ―FirstpostThe novel focuses on a subculture Mumbai's Roman Catholic community in the suburb of Orlem ―GQ IndiaPereira has woven into the tapestry of Bombay the stories and backstories of a community that has been part of the metropolis for long but has clung to the fringes ―Business LineWith a journalist's ear for the way people talk and a novelist's attention to detail Lindsay Pereira paints a terrible and intimate portrait of a community's alternating cycles of hope and despair. Though this is a savagely drawn series of sketches it is not without compassion and always backlit by the liberal humanist values that have illuminated Pereira's journalistic writing. -- Jerry Pinto author of Em and the Big Hoom and Murder in MahimVivid and unsentimental a striking debut in the lineage of Naipaul and Nagarkar. -- Anjali Joseph author of Saraswati Park Another Country and The LivingOrlem is one among scores of religious village-ghettos that betray Mumbai's claims to cosmopolitanism. But what Pereira does with his Orlem is a class apart. As the stories pile up in prose that is as masterful as it is inventive we see age-old themes rendered anew - the claustrophobia of home the desperation to escape and lives spent yearning for all that has been lost. Like the city itself Pereira's debut is that cold-eyed gaze that can barely conceal the compassion and warmth pulsing through its veins. -- Altaf Tyrewala author of No God in Sight The Ministry of Hurt Sentiments and EngglishhhAs one of the bitingly humorous voices from India Pereira expands considerably on that same facility to paint a vivid portrait of the Catholic community in Orlem Mumbai - unsparing wicked and compassionate all at once. Avoiding the usual tropes in such territory with an authenticity that side-steps sentimentality and unflinchingly looks hopelessness in the eye this is a novel that marries the individual and the collecti