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.” "[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.” “McDonald’s latest ranks as one of the best science fiction novels published in the United States this year.” “Ian McDonald has been one of my favorite writers for some fifteen years now, and the amazing thing is, he’s getting even better.” 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. RIVER OF GODS is an epic SF novel as sprawling, vibrant and colourful as the sub-continent it describes. This is an SF novel that blew apart the narrow anglo- and US-centric concerns of the genre and ushered in a new global consciousness for the genre