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The City Son: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

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Published:
Soho Press 2014
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Description
A “superb” novel of a Nepali woman’s dangerous obsession with her husband’s illegitimate son, from the award-winning author of Buddha’s Orphans (The Wall Street Journal).
 
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 nurturing he longs for.
 
But as Tarun gets older, Didi’s domination of the boy turns from emotional to 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, “the literary equivalent of watching a horror film [that] leaves us holding our breaths” (The Plain Dealer).
 
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
06/17/2014
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781616953829
ASIN:
B00HK42F84
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Samrat Upadhyay. (2014). The City Son: A Novel. Soho Press.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Samrat Upadhyay. 2014. The City Son: A Novel. Soho Press.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Samrat Upadhyay, The City Son: A Novel. Soho Press, 2014.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Samrat Upadhyay. The City Son: A Novel. Soho Press, 2014.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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2e521729-edc3-ff6d-1bc0-361ecaf62d15
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:36:01
Date Updated:
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      • bioText: Samrat Upadhyay was born and raised in Nepal. He is the author of Arresting God in Kathmandu, a Whiting Award winner; The Royal Ghost; 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.
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publishDate
2014-06-17T00:00:00-04:00
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title
The City Son
fullDescription
A “superb” novel of a Nepali woman’s dangerous obsession with her husband’s illegitimate son, from the award-winning author of Buddha’s Orphans (The Wall Street Journal).
 
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 nurturing he longs for.
 
But as Tarun gets older, Didi’s domination of the boy turns from emotional to 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, “the literary equivalent of watching a horror film [that] leaves us holding our breaths” (The Plain Dealer).
 
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: The Wall Street Journal
      • content: "Fearless . . . There's an eerie element of black magic in Didi's Svengali-like manipulation that evokes the domestic horror novels of Shirley Jackson. This superb book stages an intensely powerful showdown."
      • premium: False
      • source: Cleveland Plain Dealer
      • content: "Reading Samrat Upadhyay's disturbing new novel, "The City Son," is the literary equivalent of watching a horror film. His style is assured and unadorned. The occasional metaphor, such as "this dead blackbird inside her," arrives to arresting effect. Upadhyay leaves us holding our breaths."
      • premium: False
      • source: Booklist
      • content: "[The City Son] examines the vengeance of a truly evil woman scorned . . . Not for the faint of heart."
      • premium: False
      • source: Publishers Weekly
      • content: "Upadhyay tells his story with simple and direct prose . . . the multicharacter narration adds dramatic depth."
      • premium: False
      • source: Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply
      • content: "Buddha's Orphans is an extraordinary achievement. It has the sweep and romantic grandeur of a great old-fashioned Russian novel, and, at the same time, the precision and intimacy of a beautiful collection of linked stories. Samrat Upadhyay has created a remarkable work, one to be savored and remembered."
      • premium: False
      • source: Chitra Divakaruni, author of One Amazing Thing and Palace of Illusion
      • content: "Upadhyay has masterfully blended history, tragedy, politics and romance to create the arresting story of a family that is at once unique and universal, set against the backdrop of a vibrant, complicated, modern Nepal that will fascinate readers."
      • premium: False
      • source: The New York Times
      • content: "Subtle and spiritually complex . . . Mr. Upadhyay's stories bring us into contact with a world that is somehow both far away and very familiar."
      • premium: False
      • source: USA Today
      • content: "The Guru of Love effectively weaves together the complicated dichotomies of man and mistress, love and lust, tradition and modernity."
      • premium: False
      • source: Entertainment Weekly
      • content: "Reads like a graceful, page-turning mixture of stirring romance and social commentary."
      • premium: False
      • source: Christian Science Monitor
      • content: "[Upadhyay's] characters linger. They are captured with such concise, illuminating precision that one begins to feel that they just might be real."
      • premium: False
      • source: Elle
      • content: "A triumph, a ravishingly seductive novel."
      • premium: False
      • source: The Los Angeles Times
      • content: "[Upadhyay is] among the smoothest and most noiseless of contemporary writers"
      • premium: False
      • source: Washington Post Book World
      • content: "[Upadhyay's] stories have been burnished until they glow with visual and emotional precision."
      • premium: False
      • source: The Indiana Express
      • content: "Highly entertaining . . . a major writer-in-the-making."
      • premium: False
      • source: Publishers Weekl
      • content: "In an assured and subtle manner, Upadhyay anchors small yet potent epiphanies in a place called Kathmandu, and quietly calls it home."
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        March 31, 2014
        After learning that her husband—the Masterji, a tutor living and working in a nearby city—has a secret second family, Didi packs up her two young sons and meets the conflict head-on, forcing her way into Masterji’s urban home. Before long, she has staked claim and evicted the beautiful but troubled Apsara and her preteen son, Tarun. But as Apsara spirals into deep depression, Didi takes a strong interest in Tarun, who visits on weekends, and this interest turns both physical and psychological. Tarun grows into a young man, yet he cannot escape the grip of Didi, who molests him weekly, latching onto his every sexual desire and manipulating his thoughts. And as Apsara dips further into melancholy and mental distress, Didi supplants her as Tarun’s sole mother figure. Author Upadhyay (Arresting God in Kathmandu) tells his story with simple and direct prose. Though Apsara and Tarun find refuge with wealthy Mahesh Uncle, who takes them in and trains Tarun to be his business protégé, the young man cannot shake his past to fully grasp prosperity. Close third-person perspective wanders from character to character, and though the book loses some of its focus by the end (at which point it’s following the exploits of Tarun’s discarded wife), most of the multicharacter narration adds dramatic depth.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        April 1, 2014
        The arc of Upadhyay's narrative is like that of a soap opera, though rather more lurid. Things begin calmly enough in a village in Nepal, though they heat up quickly when Sulochana, otherwise known as Didi, finds out from a local gossip that her husband, the Masterji, has been having a relationship with a woman named Apsara and even has a son by her. This relationship has been made easier logistically because the Masterji, a renowned teacher, has been spending much of his time away from the village teaching in a city. Didi, who's known more for her fiery temperament than for her pulchritude, immediately takes charge by seeking out Tarun, the Masterji's son by Apsara, and bringing him home to live with her; the Masterji; and their two sons, Amit and Sumit. Didi is immediately struck by the beauty of her 11-year-old stepson and begins to favor him, much to the revulsion of Amit in particular. Soon it becomes clear that Didi's relationship to Tarun is becoming increasingly abnormal and sexualized. She finds excuses to spend time alone with him, and as he grows older, their relationship remains highly charged though unconsummated. When Tarun gets married at age 23, he and his wife, Rukma, immediately have problems in the bedroom, and eventually Rukma discovers her husband's appalling secret. This is a story more sad than salacious, and the human cost of the quasi-incest is exceptionally high.

        COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        June 1, 2014
        As if a woman scorned isn't enough of a story, Upadhyay (The Royal Ghosts, 2006) also examines the vengeance of a truly evil woman scorned. Didi, a rural Nepal housewife and mother of two boys, tends the home front while her husband, the Masterji, lives and teaches in a nearby city. The day she learns that the Masterji has another, and more beautiful, wife, Apsara, and son, Tarun, Didi packs up her kids and moves into her cheating spouse's city home. It's a Herculean passive-aggressive parry as she willfully ignores the other woman to the point of driving Apsara to the brink of madness. As for Tarun, Didi showers him with suffocating love and attention, at the expense of her own sons. Her sick devotion to the spawn of her bigamist husband metastasizes into both an emotional and a literal hold on the boy. All this under the spineless Masterji's nose. Upadhyay's depiction of incestuous relations can be lurid, but this makes for a succinct portrayal of Didi's depravity. Not for the faint of heart.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

popularity
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shortDescription
A “superb” novel of a Nepali woman’s dangerous obsession with her husband’s illegitimate son, from the award-winning author of Buddha’s Orphans (The Wall Street Journal).
 
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 nurturing he longs for.
 
But as Tarun gets older, Didi’s domination of the boy turns from emotional to 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, “the literary equivalent of watching a horror film [that] leaves...
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