The City of Good Death

Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing

Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

Priyanka Champaneri-s transcendent, prize-winning debut novel brings us inside India-s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go.

As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Banaras on the banks of the Ganges, Pramesh Prasad administers to dying Hindu pilgrims who hope to be released from earthly reincarnation. He lives and works contentedly with his wife, Shobha, their young daughter, Rani, the hostel priests, his hapless but winning assistant Mohan, and the constant flow of families with their dying kin. But one day the past arrives in the form of a body pulled from the river-a man with an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh.

Called -twins- in their childhood village, he and his cousin Sagar are inseparable until