The Debut Novel from Monona Wali
Winner of the Independent Publishers Gold Award for Multi-Cultural Fiction
SHIVA is the Hindu god of life and death, of destruction and rebirth. He is terrifying and he is benevolent. He has three eyes through which he can view the past, the present, and the future. The third eye looks inward. If he were to open it, the searing heat would scorch all of creation.
One autumn night Shiva slips into the bedroom of 32-year old Anjali Mehta, and triggers an erotic and dangerous dissembling of her marriage and her life. Anjali is a seeker in a world of material overdose, and her fantastical affair with the divine blue skin lover raises questions about her identity that force her to take control of her life and confront her deepest self. Set in New York City, My Blue Skin Lover is one woman’s headlong journey into spiritual transformation.
Praise for My Blue Skin Lover
“This small, lovely book . . . is unpredictable to the very end, centered around a topic rarely seen in contemporary literature—the disruption that a true spiritual awakening can cause in an everyday life. Monona Wali’s depiction of American East Indians is a special pleasure, and this fine debut novel’s treatment of the stresses of academic life and upwardly mobile marriage is spot on.” Janet Fitch, author of “White Oleander”
“If you have ever wondered (and who hasn’t?) what happens when the calm front of the everyday plus financial well-being meets the whirlwind of the spiritual and sexual, My Blue Skin Lover should answer many of your questions. Enter Shiva, and what follows is a dizzying swirl of East intersecting with West, of inner-peace confronting ambition. With this novel, Monona Wali has written a dangerous and wise book that I love.” -Jim Krusoe, author of The Sleep Garden
“In this idiomatically pitch-perfect novel storyteller Monona Wali nails the zeitgeist—and all kinds of other ghosts—by way of the exploration of longing and the longing for exploration. She combines elegant literary self-awareness with a bigger consciousness through a confident voice whose intimate telling is a stand-in for a more universal collective story of desire.” Andrew Tonkovich, host of KPFK’s Bibliocracy
From Blue Jay Ink
Purchase Online
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Bookshop.org
