New Delhi | Playwright-television executive Nayantara Roy explores family, identity and the immigrant experience in her debut novel, "The Magnificent Ruins", released in India on Sunday.

Having received widespread critical acclaim globally, the book, published by Hachette India, is a sweeping multigenerational saga set between Brooklyn and Kolkata.

It follows Lila De, a Brooklyn-based books editor whose carefully constructed life in New York is upended by a call from her mother in India. On the brink of professional success, Lila learns she has inherited her family’s sprawling, timeworn estate in Kolkata -- a lineage she had decisively abandoned 16 years earlier.

Her return to the city hurls her into a fraught reunion with her mother and into the volatile gravity of her extended family. As though the emotional terrain were not treacherous enough, her first love resurfaces the moment she arrives, while her author boyfriend seeks to redefine their relationship.

"Caught between the life she painstakingly built and the one she fled, Lila begins to sense long-buried family secrets coming undone. Written with uncommon brio and verve, 'The Magnificent Ruins' is masterful storytelling by one of the most exciting voices of our times," reads the description of the book.

Reflecting on the origins of the novel, Roy, originally from India and now based in Los Angeles, said the idea emerged from an essay she wrote in graduate school for a class titled "Other People's Secrets".

"It had rushed out of me in one sitting because that is how dams burst and it would become the genesis of 'The Magnificent Ruins'... I set the novel in a world that I knew intimately, and proceeded to invent the rest.

"I hope it will not only compel but also excavate for a reader, the universal truth of generational trauma through the lens of a specific Bengali culture and the staggering yet hopeful work it takes for those cycles to finally begin to break," she added.

A television executive by day, Roy currently serves as the senior vice-president of television at Sandbox Entertainment, where she acquires and develops original scripted series.

Her television career has included overseeing acclaimed shows such as "Normal People", "Nine Perfect Strangers", "Mary & George", "The Hunting Wives" and "Outlander".

"The Magnificent Ruins", priced at Rs 899, is available for purchase across online and offline stores.