Vauhini Vara | Books & Literature » Fiction
The Immortal King Rao
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A book mentioned as the last great book read by the interviewee.
In an Indian village in the 1950s, a precocious child is born into a family of Dalit coconut farmers. King Rao will grow up to be the most accomplished tech CEO in the world and, eventually, the leader of a global, corporate-led government. The novel covers King's childhood on a South Indian coconut plantation; his migration to the U.S. to study engineering in a world transformed by globalization; his marriage to the ambitious artist with whom he changed the world; and, ultimately, his invention, under self-exile, of Athena, his daughter. It’s a debut novel obliterating the boundaries between literary and speculative fiction, the historic and the dystopian, and confronts the age of technological capitalism and where our actions might take us next.