Blue-Skinned Gods

In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin. His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off the pilgrims who seek the child's blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be the 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 with 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. It is a powerful novel told through the eyes of a wonderfully winning and idiosyncratic protagonist.