Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 11 reviews on
In a future in which the world is run by the Board of Corporations, King's daughter, Athena, reckons with his legacy--literally, for he has given her access to his memories, among other questionable gifts.
With climate change raging, Athena has come to believe that saving the planet and its Shareholders will require a radical act of communion--and so she sets out to tell the truth to the world's Shareholders, in entrancing sensory detail, about 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 the most ambitious creation of his life--Athena herself.
The Immortal King Rao, written by a former Wall Street Journal technology reporter, is a resonant debut novel obliterating the boundaries between literary and speculative fiction, the historic and the dystopian, confronting how we arrived at the age of technological capitalism and where our actions might take us next.
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Just finished @vauhinivara’s The Immortal King Rao, and wow. Will be sharing my thoughts in Tech Review’s next print issue (part of our new books section!) but here’s my endorsement to go buy the book, out May 3.
Lincoln Michel is an author.
I talked to @vauhinivara about genre bending, Battlestar Galactica inspiration, and her truly excellent debut novel THE IMMORTAL KING RAO https://countercraft.substack.com/p/processing-how-vauhini-vara-wrote @wwnorton
Phil Klay is an author and a former U.S. Marine Corps officer.
This Thursday, a lunchtime virtual chat at noon with the brilliant @vauhinivara , discussing her brilliant novel THE IMMORTAL KING RAO, and the way big tech and capitalism shape both our politics and desires. https://t.co/Y3T2tSgNGu