More than a hundred pages in, I was still struggling to remember who is who, even though there are not that many protagonists or characters. The novel is supposed to be a tale of three generations of female Puerto Ricans,...
In 2010, 17 year old Hira is selected along with about 70 other Pakistani teenagers for a 10 month exchange program which will take her/them to America. Living a comfortable, upper-class life in Rawalpindi with her parents and 12 year...
There’s a small flood of books by Indian-American authors in the last few years that are specifically about the second-generation Indian-American experience. Other Indian-American novelists have spanned multiple generations (Well-Behaved Indian Women, by Saumya Dave), some simply feature Indian characters...
Corie Adjmi’s novel is set in the Syrian Jewish community of America. Many readers (including myself) will not be familiar with this community, or perhaps even be aware that they exist, but there are close to a million Syrian Jews...
After her Booker Prize winning The Inheritance of Loss in 2006, the world had to wait almost 20 years for Kiran Desai’s next novel – also shortlisted for the 2025 Booker. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny are about these two...
Two rivers and two countries are tied together in this novel by Shobha Rao, reflecting the duality of meaning in its title, Indian Country. One is India, of course, a country full of Indians. The other is the Native American...
Our protagonist is Zelu, a 2nd generation Nigerian American (Najiamerican) paraplegic woman, who no longer has use of her legs after she fell out of a tree at 12 years old. At the start of the novel, 34 year old Zelu...
In 1997 Seattle, a young Indian-American woman called Amina Eapen receives a call from her mother Kamala in Albuquerque. Her neurosurgeon father Thomas, it seems, has started talking to himself, and worse, to his long-dead family members. A little guilt-tripping...
Many of us have had the experience of surgery in a hospital, either for ourselves or people around us. The routine may be familiar if fraught: nurses briskly entering and leaving, vital signs checked at apparently random intervals, those bright...
It’s been 12 years since Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published her wonderful novel Americanah. In the meantime she has not been idle: she has written two books on feminism and one on grief, a collection of short stories, and a children’s...
Habitations – a place where one lives, the process of living. Vega Gopalan thinks she may be pregnant, but she doesn’t want her suspicion confirmed. Confirmation means the decision will be made and Vega is not sure she wants a...
Coming to America – Part 1 About three months ago I started two books with, published some 40 years apart, with essentially, the same story line. Both focus on young Indians coming to the US, leaving family and the comforts...
Historical fiction is not easy to write, I should think. It demands extensive research to be convincing, but at the same time the research needs to be painted in gently, filling the background, with the story in the foreground, and...
I could not wait to read this book. Rushdie has written 22 books in his 77 or 78 years of life, and of those, only 2 have been non-fiction – Joseph Anton, and now Knife. These are the only 2 books...
Nayantara Roy’s debut novel is a nicely complex addition to the Indo-American fiction genre. Her protagonist, Lila De, was born in Kolkata and lived there until she was 16, when she moved to America to join her father and stepmother...
Pedestrian Fare
Matted Sin City Tapestry
Caustic Comedy
Coming to America – Part 1
In and out of Africa
“Elegies and epitaphs, but also signs and wonders”
An enigmatic mother, precisely analyzed
Faith, science and addiction in an immigrant family
“It is simply mine. And that is what matters.”
Yangban and Ssangnom
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