The Fertile Earth - by Ruthvika Rao

Book Synopsis

FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION'S 2024 FIRST NOVEL PRIZE - An unforgettable story of love and resistance surrounding two young people born across social lines, set against a tumultuous political landscape in India.

"[A] heart-wrenching tale of forbidden love" --THE WASHINGTON POST

In a rural Indian village, two families live on opposite sides of the class divide. On one side are the landowning aristocrats; on the other are the landless indentured.

But Vijaya, Sree, Krishna, and Ranga--the children of these families--are carrying on a secret friendship. One summer, when a man-eating tiger attacks the village, the four make an ill-advised plan to go into the jungle to capture it. The hunt, and its catastrophic end, entwines their fates, and the repercussions play out over the next decade as they come of age, with violent conflict erupting between the classes.

Shortlisted for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Ruthvika Rao's The Fertile Earth is a novel in which the private rites of friendship, kinship, and great love collide with a political revolution and the forces of beauty and power are intertwined into "a masterpiece" (Booklist, starred review).

Review Quotes

"Rao's beautiful story is packed with intricate family dynamics, politics, and tragedy. This is splendid." --Publishers Weekly

"A masterpiece." --Booklist (starred review)

"[An] ambitious and spellbinding debut novel." --Shelf Awareness

"A dazzling debut... The novel is grand in the way that the Indian epics are grand. It is plot-packed, emotionally extravagant, dramatically intense, and populated with a memorable cast who breathe fresh urgency into the everyday stakes of love, friendship, pride, duty and dignity. The writing, moreover, soars... Such is the unique power and enchantment of this novel that seems destined to be a future classic." --The Guardian

"The relationship between the four characters is the heart of the book, but the village of Irumi, its inhabitants and the tensions between them are also important in this epic, ambitious debut." --The Times

"An epic social novel that movingly weaves the political and personal." --Daily Mail

"The Fertile Earth is an achingly beautiful book: its world deeply-layered, drenched with desire and daring, humming with tiny and at times explosive acts of devastation and tenderness. It's a spellbinding epic of land, class, and family in post-independence India, and an investigation of what breaks a consciousness and makes it anew, of what happens when one trespasses towards the forbidden. Vijaya, Krishna, Ranga, and Sree are formidable characters whose choices never fail to upend expectations, hurtling towards a future of earth-shattering emotional reverberations. Ruthvika Rao is a formidable writer, her gorgeous, finely-calibrated prose boldly takes on the terrors humans can inflict on one another while remaining attuned to the delicate frequencies of improbable, inevitable love." --Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West, shortlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize

"What a marvelous writer Ruthvika is. Her characters are so vivid and passionate, the stakes are so high and the history so complicated. The Fertile Earth is a compulsively readable novel." --Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

"The Fertile Earth is the kind of novel that you find yourself wanting a friend to read alongside you, to share in the beauty, tragedy, triumph and heartbreak of the world brought to life within its pages. Ruthvika Rao has crafted an astonishing, intelligent epic set during the early decades of post-Independence India, a story filled with moral complexity, intertwined fates, awakenings and romance. Reading The Fertile Earth it's clear that Rao is not only a sophisticated storyteller but an impressive prose stylist--her sentences sing. This is a novel you will not be able to forget." --Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House, finalist for the National Book Award

"From its unforgettable opening pages, The Fertile Earth held me spellbound. At its heart is a transgressive love story that dares to bloom in a world of caste-based violence, vengeance, and political transformation. Ruthvika Rao is a fearless writer, and her debut is nothing short of dazzling." --Tania James, author of Loot, longlisted for the National Book Award

"What a rich, deeply memorable novel. The Fertile Earth beautifully explores loyalty and love, violence and politics and ideology, promises and returns and the arbitrariness of origin--not to mention the inextricable histories of family and nation. This is an inspired, gorgeous book, and Ruthvika Rao's storytelling has a confident, compassionate intelligence--I'd follow her bright voice anywhere." --Natalie Bakopoulos, author of Scorpionfish

"Bold, sensual, and captivating, The Fertile Earth pits love against memory, love against class, love against politics, love against time, love against all. Read it, and find out which one wins." --Shobha Rao, author of Girls Burn Brighter, longlisted for the 2018 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

About the Author