At 29, Lila is a rising publishing executive in Brooklyn when she learns that she has inherited her family’s enormous ancestral home in Kolkata — along with the secrets that lie within— in this sweeping multi-generational debut
It is the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career as an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of a complicated extended family that she thought she left behind 16 years ago.
Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement, and then there is her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom still live in the house, all of whom resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complex, one man follows Lila to India while another has been waiting for her return, a long time.
As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence, and she must finally reckon with her inherited custom of sweeping everything under the surface.
For fans of Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes and the novels of Vikram Seth, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read.
THE MAGNIFICENT RUINS
A NOVEL
“The Magnificent Ruins gripped me from the first page and moved me to tears on the last. A wise, beautiful and haunting story about difficult mothers and daughters, the complications of family life, and redefining the meaning of home, this novel will stay close to my heart for a long, long time to come.”
- Thrity Umrigar, bestselling author of Honor and The Museum of Failures
“As gorgeous as it is wise, Roy's voice soars and whispers with uncanny insight and wit, transporting us across continents, charting not only the distance between Kolkata and New York, but the stranger more mysterious abyss between childhood and adulthood, between family and home, between daughter and mother, and perhaps between life as we want it to be and life as it is—messy, complicated, beautiful, and sad. A page-turning, heart-rending family epic, this is a wickedly smart novel that asks: How do we love one another across the entangled loyalties of geography and time? The answer will surely enlarge your life and keep you reading long into the night.”
- Sunil Yapa, author of Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist,
Pen Faulker award finalist
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ABOUT NAYANTARA
Nayantara Roy is the author of The Magnificent Ruins, her upcoming debut novel, from Algonquin, an imprint of Hachette Book Group (November 2024). In 2018, she won the Rick DeMarinis Prize for her short story, 8C. Her plays have been performed in India and the UK and she is currently at work on her second novel, Sisters Of A Halved Heart.
Tara is also a television executive at STARZ/ Lionsgate, where she oversees the acquisition and creative development of original scripted television series. Originally from India, Tara lives in Los Angeles with too many plants.Photo: Bianca Catbagan
NEWS
Creative Producing alumna Tara Roy ’17 is publishing The Magnificent Ruins, a debut novel, with Algonquin Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, in 2024.
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