Gods and Ends

Last updated

Gods and Ends
Gods and ends lindsay pereira.jpg
AuthorLindsay Pereira
CountryIndia
LanguageEnglish
PublisherPenguin Random House India
Publication date
March 2021
Pages256
ISBN 9780670094387

Gods and Ends is the debut novel by writer Lindsay Pereira. It was published by Penguin Random House India in March 2021. [1] Set in Orlem, Malad, a suburb of Mumbai populated by a large Roman Catholic community. It is described as a book about invisible people in a city of millions, and the claustrophobia they rarely manage to escape from. [2] The title is a reference to people who are twice marginalized—for being a minority community and living in a small, lesser-known part of a large suburb. [3]

Contents

Reception

The novel was described by The Hindu as "a stark and fearless portrayal of the Roman Catholic community in the Bombay of yore." [4] The publication Firstpost described it as "stark in its simplicity," adding that the writer "uses dialogue and narration with good effect, giving each character enough space to tell their story." [5] The newspaper Mid Day said "Pereira’s chronicling subtly encapsulates their eccentricities, including the diction and acerbic humour, all of which will resonate with not just Bombaywallahs." [6]

Platform Magazine wrote: "The tragedy of this book and its characters is real, and the narrative manages to create necessary space for the lives and stories of people, who are generally erased from our imagination of the limitless city of Bombay." [7] Janhavi Acaharekar, reviewing the book, wrote: "Pereira’s well-crafted characters are born of a familiarity with the milieu he writes about, and his honesty is brutal." [8] A review in the Mint Lounge called it "an acerbic, funny and, at times, brutally honest portrayal of Goan Catholics settled in the suburb of Orlem." [9]

Awards

Gods and Ends was short-listed for the 2021 JCB Prize for Literature. [10] [11] [12] [13] A citation from the judges said: "With a biting sense of humour and a quirky voice, Lindsay Pereira puts forth an intriguing debut. Part of the attraction lies in its unconventional form and structure. Each of the residents of Obrigado mansion seem to be competing in being more malevolent and pathetic than the other, making each of them particularly foul, but Pereira doesn’t offer any excuses for them, making them all unforgettable." [14]

The novel was also shortlisted for the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award for Fiction in November, 2021. [15] It was also longlisted for the PFC-Valley of Words Book Awards 2022. [16]

The author

Born in Orlem, Malad, Lindsay Pereira grew up in Bombay. [17] He studied at St. Xavier's College and the University of Mumbai and obtained a PhD in literature for his work on gender attitudes implicit in nineteenth-century Indian fiction. [18] He has worked as a journalist and writer for publications including The Huffington Post , [19] The Globe and Mail , [20] and New York Observer [21] and has been a columnist with the daily Mid-Day since 2015. [22] [23]

He was also co-editor with the late poet Eunice de Souza of Women's Voices: Selections from Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Indian Writing in English, published by Oxford University Press. [24]

His second novel, The Memoirs of Valmiki Rao, was published by Penguin Random House India in August 2023. [1] A retelling of the ancient Sanskrit epic Ramayana, it was described by translator and writer Arshia Sattar as "an elegy to a city wilfully destroyed by greed and cynicism, a lament to dreams that died and people that were murdered, a dirge that mourns the concerted dismantling of systems of thinking and being that upheld tolerance and compassion." [2] The novel was also called "a clever reimagination of the Ramayana that terrifies and evokes pity." [3]

Related Research Articles

Anita Desai, born Anita Mazumdar, is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. She won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight. She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dilip Shanghvi</span> Indian Businessman

Dilip Shanghvi is an Indian billionaire businessman. As the founder of Sun Pharmaceuticals, he is one of the country's richest people. The Government of India awarded him the civilian honor of the Padma Shri in 2016. India Today magazine ranked him 8th in India's most powerful people of 2017 list.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ashok Banker</span>

Ashok Kumar Banker is an author and screenwriter. His writing spans crime thrillers, essays, literary criticism, fiction and mythological retellings. The author of several well-received novels including a trilogy billed as "India's first crime novels in English", he became widely known for his retellings of Indian mythological epics, starting with the internationally acclaimed and best-selling eight-volume Ramayana Series. His books have sold over 2 million copies and have been published in 16 languages in 58 countries. His Epic India Library is an attempt at retelling all the myths, legends and itihasa of the Indian sub-continent in one story cycle comprising over 70 volumes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amit Chaudhuri</span> Indian poet and classical singer (born 1962)

Amit Chaudhuri is a novelist, poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, singer, and music composer from India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Orlem</span> Village in Maharashtra

Orlem is a neighbourhood in Malad, a suburb of Mumbai. Its original name in the official language of the state (Marathi) is Valnai, a term used to describe the area as "Valan" meaning turn or curve. The village was settled on a path that curved. The postal zip code 400064 serves the neighborhood. According to a Church census conducted in 2004, it was the largest parish in the Archdiocese of Bombay.

Jahnavi Barua is an Indian author from Assam. She is the author of 'Next Door', a critically acclaimed collection of short stories set in Assam with insurgency as the background. Barua lives in Bangalore, and obtained her MBBS at Gauhati Medical College but does not practice medicine. She studied creative writing in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeet Thayil</span> Indian writer (born 1959)

Jeet Thayil is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He is the author of several poetry collections, including These Errors Are Correct (2008), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award. His first novel, Narcopolis, (2012), won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and The Hindu Literary Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benyamin (writer)</span> Indian writer

Benny Daniel, better known by his penname Benyamin, is an Indian writer in Malayalam from Kerala. He is the author of about thirty books in various genres – from short stories to novels and memoirs. For his novel Goat Days (Aadujeevitham), he won the Abu Dhabi Sakthi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award and JCB Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. The novel Manthalirile 20 Communist Varshangal won the Vayalar Award in 2021.

Anees Salim is an Indian author known for his books like Vanity Bagh, The Blind Lady's Descendants and the Small Town Sea. He is from the town of Varkala, and now lives in Kochi, Kerala. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Blind Lady's Descendants in 2018, becoming only the fourth Malayalee in history to win the award for an English work. Some of his columns have appeared in newspaper The Indian Express.

Rahman Abbas is an Indian fiction writer and the recipient of the India's highest literary Award Sahitya Akademi Award for his fourth novel Rohzin in 2018. He is also the recipient of the two State Academy Awards for his third and fourth novels respectively i.e. Hide and Seek in the Shadow of God (2011) and the Rohzin in 2017. He is the only Indian novelist whose work in German has received a LitProm Grant funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Swiss-South Cultural Fund. He writes in Urdu and in English. His novels deal with themes of forbidden politics and love.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meghna Pant</span> Indian author, journalist and speaker

Meghna Pant is an Indian author, journalist and speaker. She has won a variety of awards for her contribution to literature, gender issues and journalism. In 2012, she won the Muse India National Literary Awards Young Writer Award for her debut novel One-and-a-Half Wife. Her collection of short stories, Happy Birthday and Other Stories was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janice Pariat</span> Indian poet and writer

Janice Pariat is an Indian poet and writer. She was born in Assam and grew up in Shillong, Meghalaya.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shahnaz Habib</span>

Shahnaz Habib is an Indian essayist, fiction writer, travel writer, and translator based in the United States of America. She teaches writing at Bay Path University and The New School, and works as a consultant for the United Nations. In 2018, she received the JCB Prize for Literature.

Annie Zaidi is an English-language writer from India. Her novel, Prelude To A Riot, won the Tata Literature Live! Awards for Book of the Year 2020. In 2019, she won The Nine Dots Prize for her work Bread, Cement, Cactus and in 2018 she won The Hindu Playwright Award for her play, Untitled-1. Her non-fiction debut, a collection of essays, Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales, was short-listed for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in 2010.

Janhavi Acharekar is an Indian writer of fiction and travel. She is the author of the novel Wanderers, All (2015), a collection of short stories Window Seat: Rush-hour stories from the city (2009), both published by HarperCollins and a travel guide Moon Mumbai and Goa (2009), by Moon Handbooks.

<i>Rohzin</i>

Rohzin is the fourth novel of Rahman Abbas. On this novel he won India's highest literary Award Sahitya Akademi Award in 2018. Published in 2016 by Arshia Publications, Delhi, and launched at the Jashn-e-Rekhta, Delhi on 14 February 2016. Since, then, Rohzin has been widely debated in India, Pakistan, The Middle East, Canada, Switzerland and Germany. The author coins the word- 'Rohzin' to signify the psychological trauma of children who witness the betrayal of their parents/sleeping with someone else. Critics in the Global South think of Rohzin as a literary landmark in Urdu literature.

JCB Prize for Literature is an Indian literary award established in 2018. It is awarded annually with ₹2,500,000 (US$31,000) prize to a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian writer working in English or translated fiction by an Indian writer. The winners will be announced each November with shortlists in October and longlists in September. It has been called "India's most valuable literature prize". Rana Dasgupta is the founding Literary Director of the JCB Prize. In 2020, Mita Kapur was appointed as the new Literary Director.

Tanuj Solanki is an Indian writer who is founder of Bombay Literary Magazine and author of Diwali in Muzaffarnagar, Neon Noon, The Machine is Learning and Manjhi’s Mayhem.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shubhangi Swarup</span>

Shubhangi Swarup is an Indian author, journalist and educator. She is best known for her novel Latitudes of Longing, which was published in 2018 by HarperCollins and was declared a bestseller soon after its release in India, and Sweden.

<i>Latitudes of Longing</i> 2018 novel by Shubhangi Swarup

Latitudes of Longing is the debut novel by Indian author and journalist Shubhangi Swarup. One of the first Indian novels to engage with environmental changes, it is a “novella in four parts” featuring nature as a living, heaving entity. A literary fiction, the novel is set in the Indian subcontinent that follows the interconnected lives of its characters searching for true intimacy.

References

  1. 1 2 Pereira, Lindsay (2021). Gods and Ends. Penguin Random House. ISBN   9780670094387 . Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  2. 1 2 Hegde, Sahana (11 July 2021). "'Gods and Ends': Lindsay Pereira's novel offers an unflinching eye for stories of the wretched". Scroll.in. Retrieved 13 July 2021.
  3. 1 2 Janardhan, Arun (22 March 2021). ""There are other lives, other voices": Journalist Lindsay Pereira on his debut novel Gods and Ends". GQ India. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  4. ↑ Anima, P. (6 April 2021). "A menagerie of people who wither away". @businessline. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  5. ↑ "Gods and Ends author Lindsay Pereira: 'Bombay has the ability to horrify or surprise at every turn'". Firstpost. 5 April 2021. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  6. ↑ "Arre baba, dis is Orlem". www.mid-day.com. 20 March 2021. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  7. ↑ Verma, Nidhi (7 April 2021). "Lindsay Pereira". www.platform-mag.com. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
  8. ↑ Acharekar, Janhavi (8 May 2021). "Hopeless in hovels: Janhavi Acharekar reviews Lindsay Pereira's 'Gods and Ends'". The Hindu. ISSN   0971-751X . Retrieved 11 May 2021.
  9. ↑ "Those miserable Goan Catholics of Mumbai's Orlem". Mintlounge. 3 June 2021. Retrieved 3 June 2021.
  10. ↑ Scroll Staff (4 October 2021). "JCB Prize shortlist 2021: VJ James, Daribha Lyndem, Shabir Ahmad Mir, M Mukundan, Lindsay Pereira". Scroll.in. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  11. ↑ "Debuts and translations make up the JCB Prize 2021 shortlist". Mintlounge. 4 October 2021. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  12. ↑ "JCB Book Awards | Literature Award India | JCB Book Prize". www.thejcbprize.org. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  13. ↑ "2021 JCB Prize for Literature longlist is announced". The Indian Express. 6 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  14. ↑ "Gods And Ends Lindsay Pereira Vintage Books". www.thejcbprize.org. Archived from the original on 6 September 2021. Retrieved 6 September 2021.
  15. ↑ "Tata Literature Live! First Book Award - Fiction -". Tata Literature Live!. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  16. ↑ Post, Garhwal (19 April 2022). "PFC-VoW finalises long list for Book Awards | Garhwal Post" . Retrieved 15 August 2022.
  17. ↑ Pereira, Lindsay (21 April 2017). "Of ghosts, fêtes and chicken lollipops". mint. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  18. ↑ "Lindsay Pereira". Penguin Random House India. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
  19. ↑ "Lindsay Pereira". www.huffingtonpost.ca. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  20. ↑ "What I learned as a Michael Jackson impersonator in Mumbai" . Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  21. ↑ "Lindsay Pereira". Observer. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  22. ↑ "Lindsay Pereira". www.mid-day.com. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
  23. ↑ Janardhan, Arun (22 March 2021). ""There are other lives, other voices": Journalist Lindsay Pereira on his debut novel Gods and Ends". GQ India. Retrieved 27 May 2021.
  24. ↑ "Women's Voices - Paperback - Eunice de Souza, Lindsay Pereira - Oxford University Press". global.oup.com. Retrieved 4 May 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.