SHAPE-SHIFTING STORY SETS MONSTERS IN INDIA
Magical predators stalk the past and present in debut novel
The Devourers is a cross-genre literary fantasy novel that stretches from the 17th-century Mughal Empire to contemporary India, charting the migratory journeys of immortal shape-shifters as they brush up against the more ephemeral human lives that feed their dual selves. Indrapramit Das (a.k.a. Indra Das) is a writer from Kolkata, India. This is his debut novel. He graduated from the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2011.
Q Tell us about your book.
AThe Devourers is my werewolf novel, my monster novel, my fantasy novel, my historical novel, my literary fiction novel, my mythic magic realist novel. I wanted to write something that would really feel uncategorizable, and unusual, that would tell a familiar story in a new way. From positive and negative Goodreads reviews so far, I think that I’ve — somewhat — succeeded?
The novel starts with Alok Mukherjee, a lonely college professor in contemporary Kolkata (you can see the strains of litfic right there — lonely male prof, no affair with a student, though) meeting an intoxicating stranger who claims to be half-werewolf. The stranger is something of a hypnotic storyteller, and begins to unravel a — in the form of translated historical journals he wants Aokto transcribe — tale of a shape-shifter migrating from Europe to the Indian subcontinent during the Mughal era.
This werewolf meets Cyrah, a transient woman, in a caravanserai near the then-incomplete Taj Mahal, and demands that she allow him to procreate with her, because his kind are forbidden to have children. Past and present twine together as Alok reads this story and continues to be drawn into the stranger’s orbit, with these two humans across time beginning to realize they’ve come dangerously close to a magical, predatory race of shape-shifting hunters hiding in plain sight against the tapestry of human mythology and culture. Alok and Cyrah must decide whether they want to open their eyes or flee from secrets both horrifying and beautiful.
Q You were a student at the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing program. Did you write the novel here in Vancouver?
AI wrote part of what became the novel in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as an undergrad, in a college dorm room.
I lived in the ‘International House,’ which was actually a house. I had to go down two floors to the kitchen every time I needed a new cup of tea, or walk five minutes to the campus coffee shop for something slightly stronger, or a few blocks to the bar or the liquor store for something stronger still. I completed the first draft of the novel in Vancouver, as my thesis for the MFA program at the University of British Columbia.
Q Your novel features a prominent character who is a survivor of sexual assault, and her journey in dealing with the aftermath. What led to writing about this subject?
AIt started with how easily I used sexual assault as a trope in one of my college-era stories (which I integrated into the novel, in fact, after a lot of rewriting) — it’s something I barely thought about, but used as a way to gain emotional weight in a story, using a woman character as a pawn for self-congratulatory ‘darkness’ that points out that rape is a bad thing. When I looked back at that as an older writer, I wanted to interrogate that impulse, because it mirrors the way we’re taught to think about violence against women (and other marginalized populations) in a patriarchy. We’re taught not to really think about it, or consider why it happens, or to centre or listen to its victims and survivors, to instead just tell ourselves: look, this is bad, very bad, and monsters do it (women, don’t make yourselves prey, come on; men, don’t be monsters, simple enough). Which, of course, isn’t true. The monsters part. Misogyny and sexism (and transphobia, homophobia, etc) are ingrained in our cultures, and poison everything we do. We can’t begin to treat the sickness without acknowledging it.