The Devourers (English, Paperback, unknown)

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.

"This is an intense and thrilling novel spanning centuries of Indian life, injecting into that immense history a kind of under-story or inner story that casts a new light on everything we thought we knew. Indra Das’s writing is powerful and precise, it grabs you and propels you along quite vividly.  I’ll be looking forward to reading more by him.”
--Kim Stanley Robinson, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Mars Trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt.

"Astonishing, erotic and disturbing. A narrative that takes possession of you and pulls you along in its wake."
--M.R. Carey, author of The Girl With All the Gifts and DC/Vertigo Comics' Lucifer

"[Das] has redefined the modern Indian fantasy novel."
--Vogue India

“[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

“The language is beautiful…at every instant alive.”
-- Open Magazine

“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."

or "The writing of speculative fiction by Indians has been woefully sporadic; thankfully, The Devourers breathes new life into the literary genre and takes it to an altogether different plane."
--The Telegraph (India)

"The Devourers is wildly original and enormously riveting."
--The Daily Pioneer

"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 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.