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BLUE SKINNED GODS 
by SJ SINDU

 

Traveling from the ashrams of India to the underground rock scene of New York City, Blue-Skinned Gods explores ethnic, gender, and sexual identities, and examines the need for belief in a fractured world.


In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin. His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off of the pilgrims who seek the child's blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be tenth human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. 


Kalki is confronted with three trials in his tenth year—tests of his power that will prove his divine status and, his father tells him, spread his fame worldwide. Over the next decade, as the story of his family unravels, his relationship to everyone—his dominating father, his beloved cousin, his cancer-stricken aunt, and the young woman he imagines he will marry—threatens to fall apart. At once a personal tale of youthful searching, and a magisterial, continent spanning tour-de-force, Blue-Skinned Gods is unwaveringly honest and heartbreaking, a powerful novel told through the eyes of a wonderfully winning and idiosyncratic protagonist.

'The richness of this story will take hold of you and never let go.' Roxane Gay

 

'A wonderful book about family, friendship, and miracles.' Elise Hooper


'It delivers everything I didn’t know I desperately wanted' Devin Murphy

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ISBN (Paperback): 9781915054326

 ISBN (Ebook): 9781800310001

Published 28th February 2023

Price: £8.99 (Paperback), £5.99 (Ebook) Extent: 336 pages

Format: 135x216mm
Rights Held: UK and Commonwealth, excluding Canada; Europe non-exclusive/LP

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SJ Sindu was born in Sri Lanka and raised in Massachusetts. Sindu is the author of the novel Marriage of a Thousand Lies, which was selected by the American Library Association as a Stonewall Honor Book, as well as nonfi ction I Once Met You But You Were Dead, which won the Split Lip Press Turnbuckle Chapbook Contest. A 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, Sindu holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University, and currently teaches at Ringling College of Art & Design. She lives in Canada with her partner, the poet Geoff  Bouvier.

Follow @sjsindu on Instagram and @sjsindu on Twitter.

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