River of Gods (76 page)

VASUS: in Vedic Hinduism, the eight attendants of Indra:
means "excellent."

VIBHUTI: white scared ash-powder worn by Sadhus in
devotion to Siva.

WALLAH: "fellow": a very common suffix, as in
"chai-wallah" and "dhobi-wallah"

YAKSHAS: semidivine beings living under the Himalayas.

YALI: mythical leaping leonine beast.

YONI: the vagina as sacred source.

ZAMINDAR: Indian village landowner.

ZENANA: the women's part of a traditional Muslim house.

Thanks to Ritu Parvaaz for Hindi assistante.

The soundtrack to
River of Gods
features tracks from the
following artists.

Talvin Singh, Thievery Corporation, A.R. Rahman, AmarBaaba Maal,
Asian Dub Foundation, Autechre, Badmarsh and Sri, Bjork, Black Star
Liner, The Blue Nile, Boards of Canada, The Chemical Brothers, Dead
Can Dance, The
Fake
Portishead, Future Sound of London,
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Goldfrapp, Jamyang, Joi, Jeff Buckley,
Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham
: original movie soundtrack, Nitin
Sawhney, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Rakesh Chaurasia, Sigur Ros, State of
Bengal.

Ian McDonald is the author of many science fiction novels, including
Desolation Road, King of the Morning, Queen of the Day, Out on Blue
Six, Chaga
, and
Kirinya
. He has won the Philip K. Dick
Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best
Novel, been nominated for a Hugo Award, and has several nominations
for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He lives in Belfast, Northern
Ireland.

NOMINATED FOR BOTH THE HUGO AND THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDS

WINNER OF THE BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION ASSOCIATION AWARD FOR BEST
NOVEL

"... a major achievement from a writer who is becoming one of
the best sf novelists of our time." WASHINGTON POST

"[A] literary masterpiece... I can't think of a better
science fiction novel I've read in years... This novel is a
masterpiece of science fiction by any meaningful standard... McDonald
takes the reader to a level of immersion in the fine detail, texture,
consciousness, pop culture, very being, of an extrapolated
non-Western culture that is utterly awesome." ASIMOV'S SCIENCE
FICTION

"McDonald's latest ranks as one of the best science fiction
novels published in the United States this year." SAN FRANCISCO
CHRONICLE

"
Ian McDonald has been one of my favorite writers for some
fifteen years now, and the amazing thing is, he's getting even
better
." CORY DOCTOROW, author of
Someone Comes to Town,
Someone Leaves Town;
coeditor of
boingboing.net

AUGUST 15, 2047—HAPPY HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY, INDIA

As Mother India approaches her centenary, nine people are going about
their business—a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a
stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a
dropout. And so is Aj — the waif, the mind reader, the
prophet—when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden.

In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the
fate of the nation.

River of Gods
teems with the life of a country choked with
peoples, cultures, and technologies—one and a half billion
people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian
McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium in
which a war is fought, a love betrayed, and a message from a
different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.