Promotional Information

In a remote town, near a rock formation known as The Pinnacles, lives intertwine, stories echo, and the universal search for meaning and connection continues.'Kunzru's great American novel' Independent

About the Author

Hari Kunzru is the author of the novels The Impressionist, Transmission and My Revolutions, and the story collection Noise. He lives in New York.

Reviews

Extraordinary . . . smart and innovative . . . Kunzru is conspicuously clever and talented . . . a revelation . . . interesting and exhilarating . . . a virtuoso performance . . . funny and ingenious . . . This clever and extremely enjoyable novel deserves to be popular not just with hippies, students and other questing types, but also with more sceptical audiences
*Guardian*

The literary skills of Hari Kunzru are evident throughout this complex and disturbing novel . . . beautifully constructed sentences . . . A brilliant crossover literary feat . . . Careful readers will find Kunzru himself is something of a trickster
*Annie Proulx*

Consistently atmospheric . . . Richly detailed . . . For all the wit, this is a dark portrait of modern morals . . . Kunzru tenderly teases out the humanity, to powerful emotional effect
*GQ*

Psychological acuity, a wonderful linguistic precision and the ability to make beautiful accordance between form and content via thoughtful narrative experiment. Gods without Men is a step further along the road towards the full realisation of Kunzru's early promise. It makes undeniable the claim that he is one of our most important novelists . . . As large and cruel and real as life . . . Never less than entertaining
*Independent on Sunday*

With each novel, Hari Kunzru is proving himself a subtler and more ingenious writer . . . his most ambitious work yet
*Scotland on Sunday*

Gods Without Men is a dazed, erudite and unforgettable novel
*David Mitchell*

Kunzru's gift for satire remains undimmed . . . Kunzru has already established himself as one of the most socially observant and skilful novelists around. In Gods Without Men, he has raised his game still further, creating a mature, intricately balanced fiction that is consistently gripping and entertaining
*Literary Review*

A funny, beautifully observed novel that raises big questions about how far events and people, past and present, are connected. But for all the big ideas, it is also surprisingly moving
*Psychologies*

Dizzying scope . . . It is a testament to Kunzru's ability as a writer that Gods Without Men presents so many characters sketched so vividly
*New Statesman*

Kunzru's gift for the plain craft of prose, [and the wilful idiosyncrasy that] has shaped this sprawling, multi-stranded novel
*Metro*

Involving, thoughtful and thoroughly entertaining
*Daily Mail*

Hugely entertaining . . . A warm and well-travelled intelligence . . . Heartwarming
*Sunday Express*

His biggest, most ambitious and most engaging novel to date
*The Times*

Psychological acuity, a wonderful linguistic precision and the ability to make beautiful accordance between form and content via thoughtful narrative experiment. Gods without Men is a step further along the road towards the full realisation of Kunzru's early promise. It makes undeniable the claim that he is one of our most important novelists . . . As large and cruel and real as life
*Independent on Sunday*

Ambitiously eclectic . . . smartly sharp social detail, high-fidelity dialogue, vivid evocation of place . . . ironic wit and exuberant guyings of paranormal gobbledegook
*The Sunday Times*

Fuelled by an energetic intelligence. Along with a love of big ideas came narrative zest, verbal and comic flair, and an acute eye for contemporary mores both East and West . . . Gods with Men marks another new and bold departure . . . This really is Kunru's great American novel . . . Compulsively readable, skilfully orchestrated, Kunzru's American odyssey brings a new note into his underlying preoccupation with human identity'
*Independent*

Being able to create a vivid sense of place is one of the hallmarks of a quality literary writer, but few could have done so as brilliantly as Hari Kunzru in his latest novel Gods without Men
*Big Issue*

Intensely involving . . . Gods Without Men is one of the best novels of the year
*Daily Telegraph*

As characters in acclaimed British novelist Kunzru's pitch-perfect masterwork tinker with machines for communicating with an interplanetary craft circling the Earth, their desperate quest for meaning is interrupted by a nonlinear melange of other strange endeavors that span centuries and cross the Mojave Desert: British rocker Nicky Capaldi's escape from L.A. in a convertible with a gold-plated Israeli handgun stowed in the glove box; beleaguered parents Jaz and Lisa Matharu's disastrous vacation with their autistic four-year-old, Raj; former hippie commune "Guide" Judy's return to the desert, strung out on meth; and traumatized Iraqi teen Laila's participation as an actor in U.S. army war game facsimiles of Iraq. Presiding over it all are the Pinnacles, three fingers of rock that bear mute witness to Raj's disappearance and the ensuing frantic search. Also on board are Fray Francisco Hermenegildo Tomas Garces, a half-mad Jesuit missionary intent on converting Native Americans at the close of the 18th century; Deighton, a disfigured ethnologist, annoyed by the young, "half-educated" Eliza's failure to recognize "the distinction he'd conferred on her by asking her to be his wife"; an aircraft mechanic named Schmidt working in the '40s who feels betrayed by what the Enola Gay unleashed over Hiroshima; a working-class mother seduced by the possibility of fellowship with benevolent otherworldly beings; and a local girl who once lived with the hippies and who-even though she returns years later to run the motel where Nicky, Jaz, Lisa, and Raj briefly stay-suspects she has never quite returned. Kunzru's (My Revolutions) ear for colloquial speech creates a cacophony that overlays his affectionate descriptions of the desolate landscape, creating a powerful effect akin to the distant cry of urgent voices crackling up and down the dial on a lonely drive through an American wasteland. Agent: Melissa Pimentel, Curtis Brown. (Mar. 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In 2008, Jaswinder (Jaz) Singh Matharu, MIT grad and the rebellious Baltimore-bred son of a Punjabi family, heads to the Southwest with Jewish American wife Lisa and autistic son Raj. Along with drug-hazed London rocker Nicky Capaldi, to whom Raj takes a shine, they find themselves stuck (and coming unstuck) at a motel in a beautifully barren area where, we learn in multiple date-marked chapters, Fray Garces managed a mission (1778), Mormons murdered intruders (1871), the disaffected Schmidt seems to have seen a spaceship (1947), a community believing in extra-terrestrials gathered (1958), a hippie commune emerged (1969), and, significantly, an ethnologist studying the disappearing Natives saw an Indian man walking with a ghostly white child (1920). Woven throughout is the tale of Coyote, who risks all to visit the Land of the Dead, and as time collapses and the multiple stories coalesce, Raj disappears. VERDICT At first somewhat slow as the various stories are laid out, this extraordinary novel by the estimable Kunzru (My Revolutions) gathers momentum, power, and a fierce clarity to deliver a rich panorama while detailing our mutual antagonisms and deepest spiritual needs (met, perhaps, with "a vast emptiness, an absence"). Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 9/11/11.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.