Foreign

The debut novel by the author of the critically acclaimed The Laughter, published in North America for the first time—the story of a mother who travels back to her home country of India to bring back her runaway son, and who discovers anew the surprise and complexity of the place she left behind.

Foreign begins in a small Indian village, where a desperate farmer, downtrodden by political strife and circumstance, contemplates whether he can go on with his life. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Katya Misra is celebrating in Seattle. She leads a successful academic life and has a teenage son, Kabir. But suddenly, Katya is informed that her son has run away to India. She soon realizes that Kabir wants to find his father, whom he has never met before.

Katya has a condescending attitude towards her mother country, and so she is determined to bring back her son to the US, whatever the cost. She eventually travels to a village where she realizes that there is an epidemic of farmers taking their lives due to economic hardship. Soon enough, she realizes that Kabir himself is living in the home of yet another troubled farmer. Kabir, it turns out, has become inspired by his father, who is deeply involved in selfless social work. Nevertheless, Katya sticks to her plan to take Kabir back to America. She finds an ally in Gayatri Bai, the farmer’s wife. The two women strike a deal with each other, in which Gayatri Bai is to save Kabir’s life in exchange for
Katya's help in stopping the farmer from enduring the worst. Kabir and Katya find that their lives have now become intertwined with the fate of the farmer. How will their relationship evolve now that they see themselves in light of others’ struggles—and what will they learn?

Foreign is an engrossing, page-turning depiction of contemporary India that will remind readers of such enduring works as Thrity Umrigar’s The Space Between Us, Neel Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others, and Megha Majumdar’s A Burning.