The Magnificent Ruins

Vikram Seth and Thrity Umrigar meet Rebecca in this exhilarating inheritance story about an Indian American book editor from Brooklyn who inherits her ancestral home in Kolkata, and her extended family still living there. With an unforgettable house at its heart, a violent past erupting into the present, a problematic romance, and a compelling and conflicted heroine, this is an utterly addictive read that will spark conversation.

.It is the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career 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 an extended family that she thought she left behind sixteen years ago.  

Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement, and then there are 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 complicated, her first boyfriend seeks her out when she arrives, and her star author-and occasional lover-is suddenly determined to make things serious.   

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 keeping everything under the surface. 

Wise, witty, and deeply moving, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read and a stunning debut.

New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction 2024

Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite Book of 2024

Named a Most Anticipated/Recommended Book of the Season by the Los Angeles Times, People.com, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Alta Journal, The Week, AV Club, Zibby Owens, and more.

"The Magnificent Ruins utterly transported me to the Lahiri family's Kolkata. I felt as though I were occupying a room in their house, bearing witness to its fading glory, the political unrest beyond its gates and--most vividly--the tangle of relatives whose complicated love is at the heart of the story. Nayantara Roy brings these characters to life with such humanity and conviction that I believed they were real, and I missed them intensely when I reached the end."

--Sheila Sundar, author of Habitations

"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
"The Magnificent Ruins is beautifully written [and] poignant"--Washington Independent Review of Books
"A deliciously long book, The Magnificent Ruins is riveting from its first page to its last."--BookPage
"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 Calcutta 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 with an incredible generosity for characters and readers, and one that that eschews easy villains and easy answers and 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. Quite simply one of the best novels I've ever read about what it means to call two places home."--Sunil Yapa, author of Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist
"Roy's powerhouse debut centers on a fabulous decaying mansion...If you love a family epic set in India (the food! The melodrama!), this one's for you." --People.com, Best Books of November 2024
"Roy's roomy novel draws us deep into the way family history is inscribed on buildings. With The Magnificent Ruins, she proves herself a daring architect, taking full advantage of this sprawling plot to explore a family shaken to its foundation... I'm smitten... Eight thousand miles doesn't feel so far away when we're traveling with a writer this inviting."--Ron Charles, Washington Post
"Shakespearean in scope and cinematic in vision, The Magnificent Ruins is a rare feast of a novel about the power, burden, and gift of inheritances both concrete and intangible. I read it with hunger--absorbed by Lila De's story, invested in her family's dynamics, and craving complete immersion in the colors, flavors, and politics of the complex Kolkata they call home--and finished it utterly satisfied. Nayantara Roy writes as her heroine lives: with courage and devotion, intelligence and skill."--Rachel Lyon, author of Fruit of the Dead and Self-Portrait with Boy
"Sharp-eyed and vividly detailed, Roy's debut explores secrets, shifting identities, the clash between tradition and modernity, and the overwhelming gravitational pull of family."--Shelf Awareness
"So many of Roy's pages are a love letter to Kolkata...her writing truly shines"--New York Times Book Review

Nayantara Roy is a television executive at STARZ/ Lionsgate, where she oversees the acquisition and creative development of original scripted television series. Prior to STARZ, she worked at Endeavor Content series (Normal People, Nine Perfect Strangers) and at AGBO, Joe and Anthony Russo’s television studio. In 2018, Tara won the Rick Demarinis Short Story Prize for her short story, 8C. Originally from India, she is a 2020 alumni of the CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacific Executives in Entertainment) Leaders Program and at STARZ, is a jury member of the STARZ #TakeTheLead director’s program, which is designed to create more directing opportunities for women and people of color. Her plays have been performed internationally, including at Prithvi Theater in Mumbai, India and Contact Theater, Manchester, UK. She lives in Silverlake, Los Angeles.

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