Being part of a Jewish and South Asian Indian family surely has delicious perks: "Making Indian food that my mom ate as a kid for a Jewish holiday that my dad grew up with – that was a lucky combination." For the first-night-of-Hanukkah meal, a...
Rakesh Satyal (Blue Boy) brings together two couldn't-be-more-different Indian Americans for friendship, fun, and more (no, not like that). Harit, a department store salesman, has recently lost his sister; his mother, catatonic with grief, only reacts when Harit dons a sari and channels his dead...
Certain authors are their own best narrators – even more true for memoirs (think Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Luvvie Ajayi). Here, Scaachi Koul’s accomplished reading comes with the bonus of regular vocal interjections from her father. With this first book, a collection of smart, sassy, revealing...
Sometimes – way too often, these days – reality is just, well, too real. So into these beckoning pages I retreat. Novels about bookstores are ultra-alluring, since the possibility of escapist respite is virtually limitless. To follow are a dozen recent titles celebrating those literary...
ABSTRACT These books feature diverse characters who – in a multiplicity of ways – suffer, learn, and generally triumph in their differences. Varying in genre from picture book to poetry, in setting from Kenya to California, and in ethnic focus from Muslim Bangladeshi to Ojibway/Anishinaaabe (Canadian...
'The Windfall' adroitly probes questions of money and true worth Mr. Jha, who not so long ago comfortably supported his family on a monthly salary equivalent to $200, sells his website for $20 million. That titular “windfall” transforms his life – and, of course, that of...
Talking Race, Kid Lit, and EVERYBODY’S SON with Thrity Umrigar About 15 years ago, when Thrity Umrigar was already a successful journalist and about to become an English professor, she attended a lecture at Emerson College in Boston and left with her first literary agent. Shortly thereafter, her debut...
While Columbus is credited with discovering the Americas, notable scholars and historians have argued that Chinese explorers traveled around the world in the early 15th century and created a surviving map that shows America on its route. Imagine if those ancient explorers had stayed. The history of Asians...
*STARRED REVIEW Soli is still a teenager when she becomes pregnant during her journey from her native Mexican village to northern California. Partly joyous because she's love-struck, mostly nightmarish for what she must endure to survive, Soli enters the United States illegally and eventually finds a...
In this debut novel (following Quarantine), western New York in 1985 and western India in 1998 are introduced as prologue, with both time and place connected by the 12-going-on-13-year-old and 26-year-old versions of Kiran Shah, whose coming-of-age as a bicultural gay Indian American is...
'Temporary People' depicts the lives of guest workers in the UAE The sense of displacement, of disconnect begins on the cover: The words “A Novel” written sideways, unobtrusively stamped along the left side under the title Temporary People, might be considered misleading. Made up of three...
Equal parts romance, fairy tale, horror, history, travelog, and treatise on the transformative power of storytelling, Indra Das’s debut combines a dual narrative about the developing relationship between two strangers with a fantastical tale set seemingly long ago. One December evening in Kolkata, Alok, a history...
'Olive Witch' is the memoir of an outsider on a quest for belonging “bow echo,” the very first words of Abeer Y. Hoque’s raw, unblinking, urgent-in-these-times memoir, Olive Witch, is an easy-to-miss clue. Followed by a temperature (73°F) and what looks like a diary entry, the...
*STARRED REVIEW "We are all migrants through time," observes Man Booker Prize short-lister Mohsin Hamid (The Reluctant Fundamentalist). The impulses driving such movement, especially when rooted in violent conflict, is at the core of Hamid's exceptional fourth novel. In an unnamed city (not unlike the author's native...
A young boy, curious about his “Ammi’s dot … a bright and pretty spot,” innocently asks, “Why do you wear that dot?/What’s so special about that spot?” His mother crouches to eye level so he can touch her forehead as she explains, “It’s not a...
The Recovered & The Unrestored Let me begin with a reader’s confession: Without a doubt, Shobha Rao’s debut, An Unrestored Woman, is the best short fiction collection I’ve read this year. These dozen stories are savage and empathetic, brutal and lyrical, mournful and celebratory as well. At...
*STARRED REVIEW When a bomb explodes in a Delhi market in May 1996, the 11- and 13-year-old Khurana brothers, who were sent to pick up the family's repaired television, are killed, while their friend Mansoor Ahmed, 12, somehow survives. The senseless tragedy inextricably binds the two...
Just after turning 8, Yasmin Kader set a goal "to read one book every day. Every single day, forever." She's already up to more than 400, thanks to after-school detours to Book Uncle's Lending Library, a street-corner pop-up made of planks piled high with books....
Best friends since age 11, Sarah and Lauren have gone from inseparable sleepovers and postcollege cohabitation to months without even seeing each other once they're in their 30s. Casually labeled by a high school admirer as "rich and pretty," the monikers have stuck: Sarah remains...
In a tiny Indian village, Anil and Leena are constant childhood companions in spite of their vastly different backgrounds. Anil, a member of the farming community's most important family, is destined for a prestigious medical residency in Dallas. Leena, the only daughter of a modest...
