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Knopf
May 2009
On Sale: April 21, 2009
336 pages
ISBN: 030726890X
EAN: 9780307268907
Hardcover
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Fiction
A poignant, funny, blazingly original debut novel about
sisterhood, the tantalizing dream of America, and the
secret histories and hilarious eccentricities of families
everywhere.In the wake of their mother-s mysterious death,
Linno and Anju are raised in Kerala by their father,
Melvin, a reluctant Christian prone to bouts of dyspepsia,
and their grandmother, the superstitious and strong-willed
Ammachi. When Anju wins a scholarship to a prestigious
school in America, she seizes the opportunity, even though
it means betraying her sister. In New York, Anju is plunged
into the elite world of her Hindu American host family, led
by a well-known television personality and her fiendishly
ambitious son, a Princeton drop out determined to make a
documentary about Anju-s life. But when Anju finds herself
ensnared by her own lies, she runs away and lands a job as
a bikini waxer in a Queens beauty salon.Meanwhile, back in
Kerala, Linno is undergoing a transformation of her own,
rejecting the wealthy blind suitor with whom her father had
sought to arrange her marriage and using her artistic gifts
as a springboard to entrepreneurial success. When Anju goes
missing, Linno strikes out farther still, with a scheme to
procure a visa so that she can travel to America to search
for her vanished sister.The convergence of their journeys-
toward each other, toward America, toward a new
understanding of self and country, and toward a
heartbreaking mystery long buried in their shared past-
brings to life a predicament that is at once modern and
timeless: the hunger for independence and the longing for
home; the need to preserve the past and the yearning to
break away from it. Tania James combines the gifts of an
old-fashioned storyteller-engrossing drama, flawless
control of plot, beautifully drawn characters, surprises
around every turn-with a voice that is fresh and funny and
powerfully alive with the dilemmas of modern life. She
brings grace, humor, deep feeling, and the command of a
born novelist to this marvelous debut.
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