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“The Archer's beauty resides in Swamy's sequential narrative form, which reads like music — at times almost exactly like reading a musical score — but with something more; her words carry the visceral power of a dancer's intersection with air. It's a very tough technique to pull off. But Swamy's ability to carve meaning from a lyrical use of narrative brings the reader along with Vidya on her sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity, and love. Vidya's disruptive journey is Swamy's disruption of common expressions for literary narrative. The novel is a sensual, artful dance, powerfully told” —NPR Books
Cover designed by Shyama Golden, more here
Winner of the California Book Award | Longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Award
Coverage in The Millions | Entertainment Weekly | Vanity Fair | The New York Times
“This novel swallowed me whole. The Archer is the kind of book you always hope for: lush and sensual, tasted and felt, with striking images that play out like film behind the eyes. Swamy evokes an India that resists flat stereotype and teems with exuberance, beauty, and life. The Archer is timeless yet utterly modern as it asks what it means for a woman to make a life of art.”
—C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold
“Shruti Swamy is a writer to celebrate. Her fiction is provocative, precise, and gorgeously inventive.”
—Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
“This is a singular work, a story of a dancer, and of a hungry self seated at the table of womanness and desire and art, told with unparalleled originality and elegance. Swamy writes with a thrilling clarity of vision that wakes the sleepwalker right into joyful consciousness. Every word is intimate, honest, ecstatic—utterly alive.”
—Meng Jin, author of Little Gods
“The Archer is a stunning novel, as intimate and visceral as an expertly executed dance. Swamy's arresting and immersive prose vibrates with attention, and does what the best writing does: it leaves me more alive in my own body, and renders the world around me richer—more layered—with meaning. Meditating on what it means to be an artist (and a woman), Swamy has created her own wondrous work of art—singular, unforgettable, and important.”
—Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin
“Alive with desire, Shruti Swamy's prismatic language glimmers with the force that drives her characters to dance, beating against the restrictions of body, society, tradition, sexuality, and the fallible self toward a liberatory devotion to life. A gorgeous, taut, deeply embodied reading experience, The Archer further establishes Swamy as a writer of thrilling talent.”
—Asako Serizawa, author of Inheritors
“The Archer unfolds like an urgent dream, its heroine’s desire—for artistic transcendence, love, and liberation—its driving pulse. This novel, and the many keenly rendered moments within its pages (a swirl of bright fabric, the temperature of a lover’s skin, the abrupt chilling of a mood) lodged themselves in my consciousness long after. Shruti Swamy is one of the most gifted, excitingly unpredictable writers working today.”
—Mimi Lok, author of Last of Her Name
"Shruti's Swamy's The Archer combines exquisite prose with a kind of rare narrative propulsion. I found myself reading slower and slower, to make the sentences last even longer. By the end I was exhilarated and deeply moved. The Archer is a flat-out gorgeous piece of work."
—Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown & Others