Author Event! Nayantara Roy in Conversation with Bedatri Datta Choudhury

Join us on February 7th at 5:30 as we host Nayantara Roy, who will be in conversation with Bedatri Datta Choudhury to discuss her latest, The Magnificent Ruins.

About the book:

At 29, Lila is a rising publishing executive in Brooklyn when she learns that she has inherited her family’s enormous ancestral home in Kolkata — along with the secrets that lie within— in this sweeping multi-generational debut

It is the summer of 2015, and Lila De is on the verge of a breakthrough in her career as an editor at a prestigious New York publishing house. But when she gets a call from her mother in India, informing her that she’s inherited her family’s sprawling estate, she must confront the legacy of a complicated extended family that she thought she left behind 16 years ago.

Returning to Kolkata reunites Lila with her mother after a decade of estrangement, and then there is her grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of whom still live in the house, all of whom resent her sudden inheritance. To make matters more complex, one man follows Lila to India while another has been waiting for her return, a long time.
As Lila tries to come to terms with both past and present, long-suppressed secrets from her family emerge, culminating in an act of shocking violence, and she must finally reckon with her inherited custom of sweeping everything under the surface.

For fans of Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes and the novels of Vikram Seth, The Magnificent Ruins is an utterly addictive read.

About the author:

Nayantara Roy is the author of THE MAGNIFICENT RUINS which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice novel of 2024, an LA Times Editor’s Pick, a Washington Post Best Book, a People Magazine Best Book, an Apple best debut, a Hachette book club pick and a Gold House book club pick amongst others. Her second novel, SISTERS OF THE HALVED HEART is forthcoming from Little Brown in the spring of 2026. In 2018, Roy won the Rick De Marines award for her short story 8C. Her plays have been performed internationally, in the UK and India. She is also the Senior Vice President of Television at Sandbox Entertainment where she acquires and develops original scripted series. Roy lives in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

About the moderator:

Bedatri is The Philadelphia Inquirer's Arts and Entertainment Editor. Before this, she worked extensively with documentary films, particularly in the areas of program management and commissioning. She was most recently the Managing Editor of Documentary magazine, and is a programmer with DOCNYC and SFFILM. An alumna of the NYFF Critics Academy, Sundance and SXSW Press Inclusion Initiatives, the National Critics' Institute, and Berlinale Talents, she can often be heard on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour.

Signed copies of Roy's The Magnificent Ruins will be available during the event. As always, we'll have complimentary wine available for audience members.

Host or Publisher Symposium Books Staff