> Skip to content
  • Published: 15 October 2007
  • ISBN: 9780345481511
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $34.99
Categories:

House of Many Gods

A Novel



From the author of the critically-acclaimed novel Song of the Exile, an extraordinarly moving love story about the intersection of two people -- Ana, a young doctor from a poor coastal village of Makua, Hawaii, and Niki, a Russian documentary filmmaker -- set amidst the destruction of a violent hurricane in Hawaii.

From Kiana Davenport, the bestselling author of Song of the Exile and Shark Dialogues, comes another mesmerizing novel about her people and her islands. Told in spellbinding and mythic prose, House of Many Gods is a deeply complex and provocative love story set against the background of Hawaii and Russia. Interwoven throughout with the indelible portrait of a native Hawaiian family struggling against poverty, drug wars, and the increasing military occupation of their sacred lands.

Progressing from the 1960s to the turbulent present, the novel begins on the island of O’ahu and centers on Ana, abandoned by her mother as a child. Raised by her extended family on the “lawless” Wai’anae coast, west of Honolulu, Ana, against all odds, becomes a physician. While tending victims of Hurricane ‘Iniki on the neighboring island of Kaua’i, she meets Nikolai, a Russian filmmaker with a violent and tragic past, who can confront reality only through his unique prism of lies. Yet he is dedicated to recording the ecological horrors in his motherland and across the Pacific.

As their lives slowly and inextricably intertwine, Ana and Nikolai’s story becomes an odyssey that spans decades and sweeps the reader from rural Hawaii to the forbidding Arctic wastes of Russia; from the poverty-stricken Wai’anae coast to the glittering harshness of “new Moscow” and the haunting, faded beauty of St. Petersburg. With stunning narrative inventiveness, Davenport has created a timeless epic of loss and remembrance, of the search for family and identity, and, ultimately, of the redemptive power of love.

  • Published: 15 October 2007
  • ISBN: 9780345481511
  • Imprint: Random House US Group
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $34.99
Categories:

Praise for House of Many Gods

"Illuminating."
- The Oregonian

"A lush, ambitious novel that delves deeply into familial conflict and forgiveness and offers a fascinating glimpse into the beauty and contradictions of native Hawaiian culture."
- Publishers Weekly