The Immortal King Rao

De: Vauhini Vara

Narrado por: Soneela Nankani

Duración: 15 h y 2 m

Resumen del Editor

In an Indian village in the 1950s, a precocious child is born into a family of Dalit coconut farmers. King Rao will grow up to be the most accomplished tech CEO in the world and, eventually, the leader of a global, corporate-led government.

In a future in which the world is run by the Board of Corporations, King’s daughter, Athena, reckons with his legacy—literally, for he has given her access to his memories, among other questionable gifts.

With climate change raging, Athena has come to believe that saving the planet and its Shareholders will require a radical act of communion—and so she sets out to tell the truth to the world’s Shareholders, in entrancing sensory detail, about King’s childhood on a South Indian coconut plantation; his migration to the US to study engineering in a world transformed by globalization; his marriage to the ambitious artist with whom he changed the world; and, ultimately, his invention, under self-exile, of the most ambitious creation of his life—Athena herself.

The Immortal King Rao, written by a former Wall Street Journal technology reporter, is a resonant debut novel obliterating the boundaries between literary and speculative fiction, the historic and the dystopian, confronting how we arrived at the age of technological capitalism and where our actions might take us next.

©2022 Vauhini Vara (P)2022 Recorded Books

Beautifully written, incredibly thought provoking

My book club chose this as our September book, and we all loved it! Sitting under the cover of umbrellas during a rainy Seattle night, we discussed the various themes Vauhini Vara masterfully weaves throughout her debut novel. One of my fellow members grew up in Bainbridge, and I’ve visited Blake Island before—thus giving us the opportunity to better connect with Athena, the main character, as well as many of the cast of characters.

Additionally, Soneela Nankani did a terrific job transforming Vara’s written word into audio.

Keeps getting better and better as it goes along.

The author tells several stories to piece together the larger narrative of King's life. Each story has its surpises and its 'aha' moments, when you suddenly understand. "Of course!". Each story is a glimps of how humans arrange governance and economics and the consequences of those arrangments. A productive coconut plantation pulls a family from untouchable to landowners, but then changes forever when they vote to divide it's bounty rather than share it together. The tragic consequences are practically narrated by a school teacher turn Maoist as he indoctronates his students
Together these stories paint a picture of our near future. When you finally see the picture, you an 'aha' moment. It's a picture of what the world has/will become. It's plausible and its terrifying.

Excellent story, narration mostly good

Loved the book overall. the narration should have been more authentic with Telugu words.

it didn't have a resolution.

it just ended. I thought it was going into another chapter, but then it said the end.

Beautiful Novel

Fast- paced enthralling novel full of lively characters and conflicts. The plot is woven tightly around believable characters oscillating between challenges in rural India to Boston MA, and the Pacific Northwest. Suspenseful and full of twists and turns, love, romance, betrayal and loss. Could not stop until last chapter

Vanity SciFi

The type of predictably diluted science fiction that is best avoided by even mildly seasoned readers with marginal imaginations.