Age of Vice

Have you ever cracked open a new book, read the first page, and known instantly that you need to clear your schedule, grab snacks, and get comfortable because you were about to spend the rest of the day binge-reading? That’s how it felt when I began Age of Vice—an epic, unforgettable novel that is at once a family saga, gritty crime drama, and sharp exploration of power and desire.

Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing New Delhi, the book follows three characters from vastly different backgrounds. There’s Sunny Wadia, a wealthy party boy and heir apparent to a fortune built through corruption and violence. There’s Ajay, a quiet and loyal servant, who finds his way into Sunny’s service after being taken from his impoverished family. And there’s Neda, a sharp but often aimless journalist who finds herself torn between criticizing and benefiting from Sunny’s lavish lifestyle. As these characters’ lives intersect and spiral toward tragedy, I flew through the pages, desperate to find out where each of their stories would take them.

Like the vices that fill its pages, Age of Vice is addictive and mind-altering, luxurious and devastating, as likely to make your heart race as it is to leave you with a book hangover for days. But it is also a book that will crack your heart open and have you thinking about the ways that love—and especially, its absence—can transform our lives forever.

This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything, and the family ties that bind can also kill.

New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and in the blink of an eye, five people are dead. It’s a rich man’s car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold.

Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family—loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.

In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined: Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family’s ranks. Sunny is the playboy heir who dreams of outshining his father, whatever the cost. And Neda is the curious journalist caught between morality and desire. Against a sweeping plot fueled by loss, pleasure, greed, yearning, violence and revenge, will these characters’ connections become a path to escape, or a trigger of further destruction?