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Sign up todayThe City Son
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Learn moreAcclaimed and award-winning author Samrat Upadhyay—the first Nepali-born fiction writer writing in English to be published in the West—has crafted a spare, understated work examining a taboo subject: a scorned wife's obsession with her husband's illegitimate son.
When Didi discovers that her husband, the Masterji, has been hiding his beautiful lover and their young son Tarun in a nearby city, she takes the Masterji back into her grasp and expels his second family. Tarun's mother, heartsick and devastated, slowly begins to lose her mind, and Tarun turns to Didi for the mothering he longs for. But as Tarun gets older, Didi's domination of the boy turns from the emotional to the physical, and the damages she inflicts spiral outward, threatening to destroy Tarun's one chance at true happiness. Potent, disturbing, and gorgeously stark in its execution, The City Son is a novel not soon forgotten.
Samrat Upadhyay was born and raised in Nepal. He is the author of Arresting God in Kathmandu, a Whiting Award winner; The Royal Ghosts; The Guru of Love, a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year; and Buddha’s Orphans. He has written for the New York Times and has appeared on BBC Radio and National Public Radio. Upadhyay teaches in the creative writing program at Indiana University.
Priya Ayyar is an audiobook narrator, actor, and writer with a BFA and MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her acting credits for television and film include Law & Order: Criminal Intent, All My Children, and the documentary The Children of War. She has appeared on stage in War of the Unheard, Aminta, and The Road Home, and she has written and performed in the plays Karmic Fusion and Losing Remote Control.
Reviews
“Author Upadhyay tells his story with simple and direct prose…The multicharacter narration adds dramatic depth.”
“Examines the vengeance of a truly evil woman scorned…Not for the faint of heart.”
“Upadhyay is among the smoothest and most noiseless of contemporary writers.”
“Priya Ayyar delivers a vivid and lively narration of personal entanglements. She deftly manages both the narrative voice, which has a neutral English accent, and the subcontinental accent that conveys the dialogue and thoughts of the Nepalese characters. In bringing to life the competition between women for scarce resources in the developing world, she dramatizes the tension at the core of the story. The listener keenly feels the stress of the two female characters who fight for the same man’s attention and for his financial support of their children, two legitimate, one not. The story is not for the faint of heart as it exposes the worst that can come from human desperation. Ayyar’s pitch, tone, and pace keep listeners invested in the characters to the bitter end.”
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