Acclaimed 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.
Download and start listening now!
“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.”
—
AudioFile