A Great Country
A Novel
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4.1 • 14 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Named an ELLE BEST BOOK OF 2024
Named a BEST or MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR by Readers’ Digest, Elle Magazine, CondeNast Traveler, Publishers’ Weekly, Indigo, ZibbyMag, Goodreads, BookBub & more
“A deeply moving, layered portrait of the hopes, dreams and fears a family carries as ‘other’ in the face of the modern American Dream." -- Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push and The Whispers
Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple.
For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member’s perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?
For readers of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, A Great Country explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gowda's scorching latest (after The Shape of Family) chronicles an Indian American family's complex and varied attitudes toward class and racial divides in Southern California. Ashok and Priya Shah can't quite afford affluent Pacific Hills, Calif., but they move there anyway, determined to raise their status after their humble beginnings as immigrants in middle-class Irvine. Their middle child, Maya, readily assimilates with her wealthy classmates at the new school, but their older daughter, Deepa, refuses to benefit from the social injustice of a segregated school system and insists on staying at her overcrowded old school with her close friend Paco, whose mother is undocumented. Deepa and her parents continually clash, especially after the Shahs' 12-year-old son, Ajay, flies his homemade drone over the airport, accidentally crashes it into the ground, and is beaten by the police and arrested as a terrorism suspect. Deepa wishes her parents would acknowledge that Ajay is a victim of the systemic racism they expected to be protected from by moving to a gated community, but they're more worried about becoming subjects of controversy as his continued jailing fuels a media storm. Gowda presents each family member's viewpoint thoroughly, as well as the perspectives of the cop who leads the investigation into Ajay and another who believes he should be released. Her light touch is refreshing and graced with nuance, allowing her to find the truth in a wide range of perspectives. Readers won't want to put this down.
