Striking family secrets inhabit Nayantara Roy’s ‘The Magnificent Ruins.’

On this episode of Fully Booked, Nayantara Roy joins us to discuss The Magnificent Ruins (Algonquin, Nov. 12), a rich, multigenerational family saga set primarily in an exquisite, decrepit Kolkata mansion lately inherited by prodigal daughter Lila De. When Lila arrives from the United States, after many years away, she must take stock of the house, its denizens, and a host of long-kept secrets.

Here’s a bit from our review of The Magnificent Ruins: “Lila De’s life in Brooklyn is a success, but a bereavement that pulls her back to her homeland of India forces her to confront her demons. Twenty-nine-year-old Lila is understandably saddened to hear of her grandfather’s death in India, the country she left at age 16. But she’s also shocked to learn she has inherited his enormous, historic, decaying mansion, still inhabited by generations of the Lahiri family, including her volatile, sometimes toxic mother, Maya, who divorced Lila’s father when she was an infant. Although just promoted to co-editorial director by the new management of her employer, a Manhattan-based publishing house, and involved in a relationship with a writer named Seth, Lila must return to Kolkata for eight weeks to attend the funeral and sort out her inheritance. Back in India, she is quickly swallowed up by family, responsibility, and memories, rediscovering her complex feelings toward Maya.…Then there’s Adil, her teenage love, still irresistible but now married.… While seeming at first a novel about binary choices—New York or Kolkata, work or family, Adil or Seth—over time this book’s core reveals itself to be darker and different…”

Roy is a debut novelist, author of the Rick DeMarinis Prize–winning short story “8C,”a playwright whose work has been performed in India and the U.K., and a television executive at STARZ/Lionsgate, where she oversees the acquisition and creative development of original scripted television series. Originally from India, she lives in Los Angeles and is currently at work on her second novel, Sisters of a Halved Heart.

In conversation, Roy shares a bit about what the prepublication process has been like for her as a debut novelist. We talk about the beginning of the novel, which focuses on family secrets, and how disclosure has the potential to result in liberation or disaster. We discuss Lila’s life in Brooklyn and Kolkata, her initial response to her inheritance, and her family’s response to her inheritance. We discuss the roles people are asked to assume in a family, how they shape others’ perceptions, and how these roles may change over time. We highlight Lila’s humor. Roy touches on the challenges of balancing her writing life with her executive role in television, the potential for adapting her novel into a series, and much more.

Then editors Mahnaz Dar, John McMurtrie, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

Tales From Cabin 23: Night of the Living Head by Hanna Alkaf (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins)

Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me by Glory Edim (Ballantine)

Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger (Dial Press)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Sarita by Natalie Musgrave Dossett

Experience Is the Angled Road by R. Barbara Gitenstein

Awe by Pierre R. Schwob

Being Jewish in 2025 New York City by Bert Murray

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.