Seeking Fortune Elsewhere
Stories
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
*Winner of the 2022 New American Voices Award*
*Winner of the 2023 Oregon Book Award for Fiction*
*Winner of the Writers' League of Texas Book Award*
Finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
Finalist for the Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction
Longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal for Excellence
Longlisted for The Story Prize
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In eight vivid short stories, debut author Sindya Bhanoo beautifully captures the modern immigrant experience. The soul-stirring collection overflows with empathy, authenticity, and grace, inviting us into the lives of South Indian immigrants as well as their families back home. In “Malliga Homes,” we witness the heartache of a widow whose expat daughter places her in a retirement home, while “A Life in America” introduces us to a well-intentioned Indian professor who stumbles into a major culture clash. From losing loved ones to facing prejudice to fighting for control, Bhanoo—the daughter of Indian immigrants herself—explores heavy themes with honesty and affection. The characters in Seeking Fortune Elsewhere will stick with you long after you’ve finished reading.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Bhanoo's stunning debut collection spotlights women who navigate comfortable but often stifling cultural traditions while pursuing new-world promises. In the O. Henry Prize–winning "Malliga Homes," a recent widow's daughter insists her mother move into a retirement facility in Tamil Nadu. The narrator's daughter, Kamala, left India years earlier for college in Atlanta, and Kamala's increasingly infrequent visits sadden and anger the narrator. In a perfectly apt metaphor for families caught between staying and going, the narrator pauses at dusk to admire a set of oleander shrubs: "Some of the flowers are stuck on one side while others, by sheer luck, fall to the other." In "No. 16 Model House Road," wife Latha and husband Muthu live in a house in Bangalore that Muthu's deceased aunt had left to him. A developer wants to demolish the house for a high rise, and Muthu wants to sell it in order to travel, but Latha sees the house as "a memory box of her life." Defying tradition, she stands firm in her opposition to Muthu with a "winning feeling" when, in signing a contract to remodel the house, her hand is "steady and sure." In these and other stories, Bhanoo finds novel ways for her protagonists to cope with adversity. Growing apart from the past, rather than crushing their spirit and individuality, brings them freedom and hope for the future. This introduces a great new talent.
