The Devourers

In a dusty caravanserai in seventeenth-century Mumtazabad Cyrah a young wanderer meets a man who says he is a monster. Their encounter fills her with revulsion and dread yet changes her forever. In present-day Kolkata college professor Alok Mukherjee meets a man who claims to be a werewolf. Alone and estranged after a divorce Alok is drawn to the stranger’s hypnotic allure unable to tell delusion from truth trickery from magic.// Beginning in Mughal India by the foot of the Taj Mahal and ulminating in the lush dangerous forests of the Sunderbans in twenty-first century India The Devourers is a story about shape-shifters hunters with second selves who prey on humans and live in the shadows of civilization. But it is also about what it means to be human and the transformative powers of love. Utterly gripping and wholly original it reinvents the literary fantasy novel for India imbuing it with depth emotion and richness. Review “[A] provocative debut novel…Das’ ferociously exact prose pierces through the skin of the fantasy novel to reveal the savage heart of darkness that beats underneath.”-Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle“""[Das] has redefined the modern Indian fantasy novel.""-Vogue India“One of the most satisfying fantasies to come out of India - or anywhere - in the last 10 years.” -Nilanjana S. Roy author of The Wildlings and The Hundred Names of Darkness""[Das'] prose relentlessly pulsates with life it is stark and achingly lovely."" -The Telegraph ""Surprisingly there aren’t many contemporary or Indian titles that can serve as a yardstick for Das’ speculative fiction. His first book seems to inhabit a genre all by its novel self. It couldn’t have been easy to do but the author has adeptly transported the werewolf from London and Paris of the 20th century to present-day Kolkata. The effect is curiously unsettling.""-The Hindu Business Line About the Author Indra Das’s speculative fiction has appeared in many publications and anthologies including Clarkesworld magazine and Asimov’s Science Fiction. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship to attend the Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle under the tutelage of among others George R.R. Martin and Chuck Palahniuk. He divides his time between Canada and India.