The City Son

A “superb” novel of a Nepali woman’s dangerous obsession with her husband’s illegitimate son, from the award-winning author of Buddha’s Orphans (The Wall Street Journal).
 
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 nurturing he longs for.
 
But as Tarun gets older, Didi’s domination of the boy turns from emotional to physical, and the damages she inflicts spiral outward, threatening to destroy Tarun’s one chance at true happiness. Potent, disturbing, and gorgeously stark in its execution, The City Son is a novel not soon forgotten, “the literary equivalent of watching a horror film [that] leaves us holding our breaths” (The Plain Dealer).