Publishers : Penguin Random House.
Indra Das is an Octavia E. Butler Scholar and graduate of the 2012 Clarion West Writers Workshop. He completed his MFA at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he wore many hats, including freelance editor, writing tutor, occasional illustrator, environmental news-writer, and dog-hotel night-shift attendant. His short fiction has been published in many fiction magazines and anthologies. The Devourers is his first published novel. He divides his time between India and North America and is hard at work on his next novel.
For readers of Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, China Miéville, and David Mitchell, this book presents a striking debut novel, set in India, narrated masterfully by a storyteller of keen insight and captivating imagination.
LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST (2017)
My relationship with horror (it’s a mood, not a genre) has been complicated. Most of my life I have been a scaredy cat. I could never watch monsters and ghosts or even violence on screen. In fact, as a child, even scenes out of Scooby Doo episodes made me jump out of my skin. But I was nevertheless fascinated by the supernatural – I would make my then-best-friend meticulously tell me the stories of all the scary Koi Hai episodes that she loved to watch. She was an exceptionally gifted storyteller, and the thrill of listening to the melodramatic plots unfolding through paranormal events was worth all the sleepless nights. I do not read a lot of horror, but I have thoroughly enjoyed some that I have picked up – ones that have supernatural elements and sprawling backstories.
My favourite of all time, though, is The Devourers by Indra Das – a horror fantasy set in present-day Kolkata, the Sundarbans and Mughal north India. This book is not exactly obscure – it had been published by Penguin Random House and has been favourably reviewed by big international publications. However, I have not seen many Indian fantasy aficionados reading or even talking about it. I discovered it when a fellow bookworm on the internet mentioned it in the passing, and I was immediately intrigued by the premise– a dark fantasy about werewolves set in India and written by an Indian author. The dark in dark fantasy cannot be taken lightly for this one – violence and gore abound throughout the narrative.
Despite my initial discomfort with the violence, this turned out to be one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. The book opens in a park in Kolkata, on a full moon night, at a Baul gaan performance. Alok, a college professor, is approached by an enigmatic stranger who claims to be half-werewolf. He spins a tale that begins with the mythical Fenrir from Norse mythology, an eternal being that feeds on humans, a wanderer, who has trekked to the Mughal empire with his pack. His desire for Cyrah, a human woman, and his desire to procreate, are contrary to the ancient laws of his kind. It isolates him from his pack, and from his partner Gévaudan. The subsequent acts of violence that he commits binds together Cyrah and Gévaudan, the stranger and Alok, across centuries. The writing is lush and atmospheric, evocative of vivid images of the places where the story takes its readers. The dark mangrove forests of the Sunderbans provide a rich backdrop for the eerily overwhelming blending of Norse mythology and Indian folklore, of terror and tenderness.
This intricate tale peopled with shape shifting monsters is at its core a tale of love, friendship and courage. It is a story of the human affinity for violence, but also of the extraordinary strengths that transcend this affinity. In Fenrir’s deviance, in Cyrah’s refusal to give in, in Gévaudan’s passionate friendship with Cyrah, in Alok’s struggle with his sexuality, is the very human quest of those unable to conform to the established norms of the society to come to terms with their differentness and to find their identities. Indra Das has reinvented the werewolf story – with brilliantly subversive themes, and skilled prose that makes every page a delight to read.