Devika Rege’s debut is not a definitive state-of-the-nation novel. Nor can it be characterised as the next “great Indian novel”, although it holds greatness within its pages. This chorus of the collective contains a multitude of ideologies and perspectives.
It is 2014, and the Bharat party – a thinly veiled version of the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP – is newly in power. It was a choice between “the weak governance” of the preceding ruling party, synonymous with decades of corruption, “and fascism”, and India has voted in favour of the rightwing party promising to clean the Ganga river, holy to the Hindu majority.
The novel opens with the homecoming of Naren Agashe, who has found that, after years as a Wall Street consultant, his “existence in America is like bread gone stale”. He doesn’t see it as going back home to Bombay, as the city is called here: “Going back is the wrong word, the word is forward …” A new India is on the horizon, full of ambition and potential, and he wants to be at the centre when it all comes together. In every country’s life, says Naren, “there comes a golden generation that will ride its transformation into a modern state. That means they will make wealth in a way neither their fathers could nor their sons will.” And what makes his generation the one? “India won her political freedom in 1947 and her economic freedom in 1991, but it wasn’t until this election that our political and business classes got aligned. And just in time.”
Travelling with him is his university friend and former flatmate, Amanda Harris Martin. A white American from New Hampshire, she wants to “toughen something inside that is going soft”, and secures a fellowship to document life in a Muslim-majority slum in the suburbs of Bombay. In time, and looking back through the lessons she learns, she will realise that “she has engaged with the slum as a site, not a living space”.
The third in a trio of protagonists is Naren’s much younger, impressionable brother Rohit, who runs a film studio, and comes with a wide-ranging crew of friends, across the country’s social strata. These form the novel’s secondary cast of characters: “All were active online, retweeted, even trolled, which once gave Rohit the sense that they were the voice of a generation, but since their collective shock at the Bharat party’s massive victory, his suspicion has been confirmed: what he once thought of as a generation is really a clique.”
Where Naren is moving “towards freedom” and Amanda “towards purpose”, Rohit embarks on his #rootstour through the state of Maharashtra in search of his identity and ancestry. He finds that “on the Deccan plateau, there is no gap between the country’s myths and history. The line from ancient to medieval to modern times is unbroken.” He also finds himself “high on the country’s euphoria and in proximity to power”, befriending Hindu extremists and politicians alike.
An acutely portrayed and ambitious reckoning with contemporary Indian sociopolitics and ethics, Quarterlife joins recent debuts such as Megha Majumdar’s A Burning and Rahul Raina’s How to Kidnap the Rich not only in speaking truth to the saffron power, but in articulating greater existential truths about the youth of India. “You can’t model the Indian dream on the American one. America doesn’t have our historical baggage. It’s hard to fly with a heavy ass,” says a character at one point. Who becomes collateral damage in a country’s quest for greatness, or in this case, Hindu greatness? Who marches forward, and who falls behind? Rege’s greatest gift as a novelist is in staging questions without offering conclusive answers. Uncertainty lingers in the air.
At 416 pages, the novel’s inventive structure, intricate restraint and smart foreshadowing work holds tight. It’s not the plot lines, but the faultlines of caste, class and religion that emerge from the shadows Rege throws. The novel is rendered in six parts, including an afterword in the first person where Rege muses on her motivations. It’s a slow burn, taking the characters from “Anxiety” and “Transformation” to “Stalemate” and beyond, and the crescendo chapter, “Atmosphere” – set during a 10-day festival of the Hindu god Ganesha – is reminiscent of the powwow scene in Tommy Orange’s debut novel, There There. Tensions rise. Violence simmers. The inevitable, when it does arrive, is an overwhelming punch to the gut.
Dwelling in shadows, multiplicities and liminalities, the novel is, as Rege writes in the afterword, “the eye of a needle through which many threads had come rushing, only to run on, opening ever outwards”. The city of Bombay is “a huge mango tree and we’re so ripe we’re quivering, but the mango never falls”. The country, meanwhile, is both “a body starting to eat itself” and “a world complete in itself … spinning out wildly but never going off its axis”. The same is true of the shifting worlds of Quarterlife, which never loses sight of its anchor points, or indeed, its reader.
• Quarterlife by Devika Rege is published by Dialogue (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
