The Immortal King Rao
A Novel
by Vauhini Vara
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Pub Date May 03 2022 | Archive Date Apr 30 2022
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Description
Will you, dear Shareholder, set Athena free?
Athena Rao must reckon with the memory of her father, King Rao—literally. Through biotechnological innovation, he has given her his memories. His Dalit childhood on an Indian coconut plantation in the 1950s is as alive to her as her own existence in a prison cell, accused of her father’s murder.
Egocentric, brilliant, a little damaged, King Rao had a visionary idea: the personal computer known as the Coconut. His wife, Margie, was an artist with a marketing genius. Together they created a new world order, led by a corporate-run government. Athena’s future is now in the hands of its Shareholders—unless she can rejoin the Exes, a resistance group sustaining tech-free lifestyles on low-lying islands.
Lyrical, satirical, and profound, The Immortal King Rao obliterates genre to confront the digital age. This gripping, brilliant debut poses an urgent question: can anyone—peasant laborers, convention-destroying entrepreneurs, radical anarchists, social-media followers—ever get free?
About the Author: Vauhini Vara has worked as a Wall Street Journal technology reporter and as the business editor for The New Yorker. Her fiction has been honored by the O. Henry Prize and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. From a Dalit background, she lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.
A Note From the Publisher
LibraryReads votes due by 4/1/22.
Advance Praise
"Alternating between Rao’s childhood in a small Indian village, his early student days in the U.S., and the dystopian society in which Athena has to function, Vara’s original debut delivers challenging and weighty themes with a sure hand." - Booklist, starred review
"Vara comes out the gate with a masterwork: a book that is three great novels in one – the tale of a thriving and chaotic Dalit clan in the first decades of independent India; an immigrant success story in ’80s America; and a dystopian nightmare of the post-Trump future." - Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs
"The Immortal King Rao is an odyssey of the grandest scale, spanning over a century and charting a Dalit immigrant's rise to world power. Vauhini Vara fuses intricate family lore with the history of tech solutionism and capitalist demagoguery, pointing forward to a dangerously likely future of corporate dominion; she writes with the meticulous clarity of a longform journalist, the explosive force of a Trident missile, and the ambition of her own brilliant protagonists." - Tony Tulathimutte, author of Private Citizens
"In this richly imagined saga spanning past, present, and future, Vara brings us a visionary who makes the world in his image, and the strong-willed daughter whose life could be his final legacy. Vara’s brilliance is matched only by her heart, and this unforgettable debut will challenge what you think you know about genius, capitalism, consciousness, and what it means to be human." - Anna North, author of Outlawed
"Utterly, thrillingly brilliant. From the first unforgettable page to the last, The Immortal King Rao is a form-inventing, genre-exploding triumph. Vauhini Vara’s bravura debut has reshaped my brain and expanded my heart." - R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780393541755 |
| PRICE | $27.95 (USD) |
Available on NetGalley
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