Every nation undergoes seismic shifts that reverberate through the lives of its citizens, calling into question long-held assumptions and reshaping both personal and collective identities. Devika Rege’s ambitious debut novel Quarterlife plunges readers into the heart of one such transformative moment, offering an incisive exploration of contemporary India’s complex sociopolitical landscape through the eyes of three distinct yet interconnected characters.
At the center of this sweeping narrative is Naren Agashe, a disillusioned Wall Street consultant who returns to his hometown of Bombay in 2014, just as the right-wing Bharat party comes to power. Convinced that his generation is poised to “ride [India’s] transformation into a modern state” and “make wealth in a way neither their fathers could nor their sons will,” Naren embodies the aspirations and contradictions of a nation on the cusp of great change.
Accompanying Naren is his American friend Amanda Harris Martin, whose fellowship documenting life in a Muslim-majority slum serves as a lens through which to examine issues of privilege, cultural appropriation, and the Western gaze. Meanwhile, Naren’s younger brother Rohit embarks on a journey of self-discovery that leads him into the orbit of Hindu extremists and politicians, forcing him to confront the unresolved tensions between India’s ancient myths and its modern realities.
A Symphony of Perspectives
One of Rege’s greatest strengths as a novelist is her ability to weave together a symphony of perspectives, ideologies, and experiences without losing sight of the individual threads. As she writes in the afterword, Quarterlife is “the eye of a needle through which many threads had come rushing, only to run on, opening ever outwards.” This metaphor aptly captures the way in which the novel’s characters serve as conduits for larger social forces while retaining their distinctiveness and humanity.
Through Naren, Amanda, and Rohit’s intersecting journeys, Rege probes the fault lines of caste, class, and religion that run through contemporary Indian society. She portrays a nation caught between the promise of progress and the weight of historical baggage, where the quest for individual freedom and fulfillment is inextricably bound up with questions of collective identity and belonging.
Staging Questions, Resisting Answers
Rather than offering easy answers or definitive statements, Rege excels at staging questions and allowing them to linger in the reader’s mind. Who becomes collateral damage in a country’s quest for greatness, and who is left behind in the march of progress? How do individuals navigate the competing demands of tradition and modernity, personal ambition and social responsibility? By refusing to resolve these tensions neatly, Quarterlife challenges readers to grapple with the messy, often contradictory realities of life in a rapidly changing society.
This resistance to simplistic narratives is perhaps best exemplified by Rege’s nuanced portrayal of the city of Bombay itself. Through vivid, almost lyrical prose, she presents the metropolis as a place of endless possibility and simmering violence, where the boundaries between past and present, myth and history are constantly blurred. As one character observes, Bombay is “a huge mango tree and we’re so ripe we’re quivering, but the mango never falls”—a potent metaphor for a nation on the brink of transformation, forever suspended between the promise of the future and the weight of the past.
Structural Intricacy and Emotional Resonance
Despite its ambitious scope and thematic complexity, Quarterlife never feels overloaded or unwieldy. Rege’s inventive structure, which divides the narrative into six parts ranging from “Anxiety” to “Stalemate” and beyond, allows her to modulate the novel’s emotional and ideological registers with a deft touch. The result is a work that is both intellectually rigorous and emotionally resonant, capable of provoking both thought and feeling in equal measure.
In the end, what lingers most from Quarterlife is not any single character or plotline, but rather the sense of a world in flux, a society grappling with its own transformation in all its messy, painful, and exhilarating complexity. By giving voice to this tumultuous moment in India’s history through the lives of three unforgettable characters, Rege has crafted a debut novel that is at once timely and timeless—a work that speaks powerfully to the challenges and possibilities of our own uncertain age.
“The country, meanwhile, is both ‘a body starting to eat itself’ and ‘a world complete in itself … spinning out wildly but never going off its axis’. The same is true of the shifting worlds of Quarterlife, which never loses sight of its anchor points, or indeed, its reader.”
With its symphonic blend of perspectives, its incisive social commentary, and its indelible sense of place, Quarterlife heralds the arrival of a major new talent in Indian literature. Devika Rege has crafted an ambitious, heartfelt, and utterly absorbing novel that captures the essence of a nation in the throes of great change—and in doing so, she has given us a work that will endure long after the specific circumstances it depicts have faded into history. This is a debut not to be missed.
Through Naren, Amanda, and Rohit’s intersecting journeys, Rege probes the fault lines of caste, class, and religion that run through contemporary Indian society. She portrays a nation caught between the promise of progress and the weight of historical baggage, where the quest for individual freedom and fulfillment is inextricably bound up with questions of collective identity and belonging.
Staging Questions, Resisting Answers
Rather than offering easy answers or definitive statements, Rege excels at staging questions and allowing them to linger in the reader’s mind. Who becomes collateral damage in a country’s quest for greatness, and who is left behind in the march of progress? How do individuals navigate the competing demands of tradition and modernity, personal ambition and social responsibility? By refusing to resolve these tensions neatly, Quarterlife challenges readers to grapple with the messy, often contradictory realities of life in a rapidly changing society.
This resistance to simplistic narratives is perhaps best exemplified by Rege’s nuanced portrayal of the city of Bombay itself. Through vivid, almost lyrical prose, she presents the metropolis as a place of endless possibility and simmering violence, where the boundaries between past and present, myth and history are constantly blurred. As one character observes, Bombay is “a huge mango tree and we’re so ripe we’re quivering, but the mango never falls”—a potent metaphor for a nation on the brink of transformation, forever suspended between the promise of the future and the weight of the past.
Structural Intricacy and Emotional Resonance
Despite its ambitious scope and thematic complexity, Quarterlife never feels overloaded or unwieldy. Rege’s inventive structure, which divides the narrative into six parts ranging from “Anxiety” to “Stalemate” and beyond, allows her to modulate the novel’s emotional and ideological registers with a deft touch. The result is a work that is both intellectually rigorous and emotionally resonant, capable of provoking both thought and feeling in equal measure.
In the end, what lingers most from Quarterlife is not any single character or plotline, but rather the sense of a world in flux, a society grappling with its own transformation in all its messy, painful, and exhilarating complexity. By giving voice to this tumultuous moment in India’s history through the lives of three unforgettable characters, Rege has crafted a debut novel that is at once timely and timeless—a work that speaks powerfully to the challenges and possibilities of our own uncertain age.
“The country, meanwhile, is both ‘a body starting to eat itself’ and ‘a world complete in itself … spinning out wildly but never going off its axis’. The same is true of the shifting worlds of Quarterlife, which never loses sight of its anchor points, or indeed, its reader.”
With its symphonic blend of perspectives, its incisive social commentary, and its indelible sense of place, Quarterlife heralds the arrival of a major new talent in Indian literature. Devika Rege has crafted an ambitious, heartfelt, and utterly absorbing novel that captures the essence of a nation in the throes of great change—and in doing so, she has given us a work that will endure long after the specific circumstances it depicts have faded into history. This is a debut not to be missed.
