Gods and Ends (Shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature, Tata Lit Live First Book Prize)

LINDSAY PEREIRA is a journalist and editor. Born and raised in Bombay, he studied at St Xavier's College and the University of Mumbai and holds a PhD in literature for his work on gender attitudes implicit in nineteenth-century Indian fiction. He was co-editor with the late Eunice de Souza of Women's Voices: Selections from Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Indian Writing in English, published by Oxford University Press. This is his first novel.

SHORTLISTED FOR JCB PRIZE FOR LITERATURE, TATA LIT LIVE FIRST BOOK (FICTION) AWARD

ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL LITERARY DEBUTS IN 2021

AN UNFLINCHING PORTRAIT OF A ROMAN CATHOLIC COMMUNITY IN THE BOMBAY SUBURB OF ORLEM

A DARK STORY OF CHARACTERS GRAPPLING WITH LOVE, LOSS AND SIN

'Gods and Ends is an intriguing debut with Lindsay's biting sense of humour and quirky voice. Part of the attraction lies in its unconventional form and structure.'-Jury, JCB Prize for Literature, 2021

'Vivid and unsentimental, a striking debut in the lineage of Naipaul and Nagarkar'-Anjali Joseph, Author of Saraswati Park

'...savagely drawn series of sketches...'- Jerry Pinto, author of Em and the Big Hoom

'...a class apart...'- Altaf Tyrewala, author of No God in Sight, The Ministry of Hurt Sentiments

'...one of the bitingly humorous voices from India...'- Jaideep Varma, author and National Award-winning director of Leaving Home

Philomena Sequeira knows what she wants by the time she turns fourteen. Her father wants something else.
Life is unyielding for the tenants of the rundown Obrigado Mansion in Orlem, a Roman Catholic parish in suburban Bombay. They grapple with love, loss and sin, surrounded by abused wives and repressed widows, alcoholic husbands and dubious evangelists, angry teenagers and ambivalent priests, all struggling to make sense of circumstances they have no control over.
Gods and Ends takes up multiple threads of individual stories to create a larger picture of darkness beneath
a seemingly placid surface. It is about intersecting lives struggling to accept change as homes turn into prisons. This is a book about invisible people in a city of millions, and the claustrophobia they rarely manage to escape from.

With an insider's familiarity, Lindsay Pereira presents brutally honest vignettes of Mumbai's Roman Catholic communityPereira's writing is stark in its simplicity. He uses dialogue and narration with good effect, giving each character enough space to tell their story.The novel focuses on a subculture, Mumbai's Roman Catholic community in the suburb of OrlemPereira has woven into the tapestry of Bombay the stories and backstories of a community that has been part of the metropolis for long, but has clung to the fringesWith a journalist's ear for the way people talk and a novelist's attention to detail, Lindsay Pereira paints a terrible and intimate portrait of a community's alternating cycles of hope and despair. Though this is a savagely drawn series of sketches, it is not without compassion, and always backlit by the liberal humanist values that have illuminated Pereira's journalistic writing.Vivid and unsentimental, a striking debut in the lineage of Naipaul and Nagarkar.Orlem is one among scores of religious village-ghettos that betray Mumbai's claims to cosmopolitanism. But what Pereira does with his Orlem is a class apart. As the stories pile up, in prose that is as masterful as it is inventive, we see age-old themes rendered anew - the claustrophobia of home, the desperation to escape, and lives spent yearning for all that has been lost. Like the city itself, Pereira's debut is that cold-eyed gaze that can barely conceal the compassion and warmth pulsing through its veins.As one of the bitingly humorous voices from India, Pereira expands considerably on that same facility to paint a vivid portrait of the Catholic community in Orlem, Mumbai - unsparing, wicked and compassionate all at once. Avoiding the usual tropes in such territory, with an authenticity that side-steps sentimentality and unflinchingly looks hopelessness in the eye, this is a novel that marries the individual and the collective in a truly fresh manner.Lindsay Pereira's novel offers an unflinching eye for stories of the wretched

Gods and Ends is an intriguing debut with Lindsay's biting sense of humour and quirky voice. Part of the attraction lies in its unconventional form and structure. Each of the residents of Obrigado mansion seem to be competing in being more malevolent and pathetic than the other, making each of them particularly foul, but Pereira doesn't offer any excuses for them, making them all unforgettable.