The City Son : A Novel

In The City Son, acclaimed and award-winning author Samrat Upadhyay has crafted a spare, understated work examining a thorny 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 true chance at true happiness.

Vivid, potent, disturbing, and gorgeously stark in its execution, The City Son is a novel not soon forgotten.