Red Earth and Pouring Rain — Vikram Chandra

“Rich, heady, many-layered,” a novel that is part  American road trip and part nineteenth-century epic set in India is “a magnificent tour de force.” -- Los Angeles Times

Home in Bombay after his studies in the United States, Abhay, an Indian college student, shoots a scavenging monkey only to discover that the creature is actually a reincarnation of nineteenth-century poet Sanjay Parasher.  To survive, the monkey must entertain Abhay's family by telling stories. When the monkey grows weary, Abhay tells his own stories of his life in America. 

Combining Indian myth and epic history, Vikram Chandra's “astonishing and brilliant debut"(Publishers Weekly) weaves the monkey's stories of an Indian poet and warrior alongside Abhay's own tales of a cross-country road trip across America.

 “A daring feat of imagination, technique, and wordplay. . . . Ambitious . . . And impressive, too.” -- Daneet Steffens, Entertainment Weekly