Vauhini Vara, author of the novel, “The Immortal King Rao,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky. Recorded via zencastr September 8, 2022.
Vauhini Vara studied at the Iowa Writers Workshop, worked as tech reporter at The Wall Street Journal and wrote for the business section of The New Yorker. She is a contributing writer at Wired. Her upcoming collection of short stories, This is Salvaged, will be published in 2023.
The Immortal King Rao tells two stories, that of a fictional tech billionaire who grew up in humble beginnings in the 1950s in southern India and eventually came to the United States, and during the novel flashes forward a hundred years to a dystopia in which algorithms determine the success or failure of any individual. Vauhini Vara webpage.