The Devourers
core novel 2015 The Devourers
Record
| First published | 2015 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.75 (4,828 ratings, collected 2026-09-29) |
| Page count | 320 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781101967515 |
Synopsis
On a cool evening in Kolkata, beneath a full moon, while travelling musicians play, the college professor Alok is approached by a stranger who calmly tells him that he is half werewolf, and begins a story he does not finish. Hooked, Alok agrees to the stranger's price for the rest: he will transcribe a bundle of battered notebooks, weathered parchments and scrolls of once-living skin. Out of them comes the chronicle of a race of shape-changers, called werewolves, rakshasas or djinn in different tongues, more than human and kin to beasts, ruled by hungers older than history. Its central thread follows Fenrir, a rough wanderer among a pack of European shape-shifters in seventeenth-century Mughal India, and Cyrah, the defiant human woman he wrongs, whose fates are bound to the stranger's own. As the pages mount, Alok's interest turns into something darker and more urgent.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Devourers
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: Indra Das
Awards (verified)
- Lambda Literary Award (LGBTQ SF/F/Horror), 2017: won
- Crawford Award, 2016: nominated; Shortlisted (IAFA award for a first fantasy book); the 2016 winner was The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps.
- James Tiptree, Jr. Award, 2017: nominated; Shortlisted (the award now called the Otherwise Award).
Notes
- Penguin India, 2015; Del Rey (US), July 2016. The author's debut; dark fantasy of shape-changers in Mughal-era and present-day India.
Sources
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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.