*Winner of the 2022 New American Voices Award*
Longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story
Collection
These intimate stories of South Indian immigrants and the families they
left behind center women's lives and ask how women both claim and
surrender power--a stunning debut collection from an O. Henry Prize
winner
Traveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these
stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their
families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime
symmetries in lives growing apart.
In "Malliga Homes," selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry
Prize, a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while
waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House
Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own
after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in
the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in
America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his
graduate students.
Sindya Bhanoo's haunting stories show us how immigrants' paths, and the
paths of those they leave behind, are never simple. Bhanoo takes us
along on their complicated journeys where regret, hope, and triumph
appear in disguise.
