The City of Good Death by Champaneri, Priyanka

Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing

Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

Priyanka Champaneri's transcendent, prize-winning debut novel brings us inside India's holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go.

As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Banaras on the banks of the Ganges, Pramesh Prasad administers to dying Hindu pilgrims who hope to be released from earthly reincarnation. He lives and works contentedly with his wife, Shobha, their young daughter, Rani, the hostel priests, his hapless but winning assistant Mohan, and the constant flow of families with their dying kin. But one day the past arrives in the form of a body pulled from the river--a man with an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh.

Called "twins" in their childhood village, he and his cousin Sagar are inseparable until Pramesh leaves to see the outside world and Sagar stays to tend the land. After Pramesh marries Shobha, defying his family's wishes, a rift opens between the cousins that he has willed himself to forget. Yet for Shobha, Sagar's reemergence casts a shadow over the life she's built for her family. Soon, an unwelcome guest takes up residence in the death hostel, the dying mysteriously continue to live, and Pramesh is forced to confront his own ideas about death, rebirth, and redemption.

Told in lush, vivid detail and with an unforgettable cast of characters, The City of Good Death is a remarkable debut novel of family and love, memory and ritual, and the ways in which we honor the living and the dead.

Author: Priyanka Champaneri
Publisher: Restless Books
Published: 02/23/2021
Pages: 448
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.80lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.70d
ISBN: 9781632062529
Age Range: 16-UP

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2020
Booklist 09/01/2020 pg. 35
Publishers Weekly 12/14/2020
Foreword 12/26/2020

About the Author

Priyanka Champaneri received her MFA in creative writing from George Mason University and has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts numerous times. She received the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for The City of Good Death, her first novel.