ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF VULTURE'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY FINALIST FOR THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN FICTION “A modern classic.” —The New York Times Book Review A young man's close-knit family is nearly destitute when his uncle founds a successful spice company, changing their fortunes overnight. As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, the family dynamic begins to shift. Allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things become “ghachar ghochar”—a nonsense phrase uttered by one meaning something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied. Elegantly written and punctuated by moments of unexpected warmth and humor, Ghachar Ghochar is a quietly enthralling, deeply unsettling novel about the shifting meanings—and consequences—of financial gain in contemporary India. “A classic tale of wealth and moral ruin.” —The New Yorker “Ghachar Ghochar introduces us to a master.” —The Paris Review Named a Best Book of the Year by the Guardian, Globe and Mail, and Publishers Weekly Shortlisted for the ALTA National Translation Award in Prose Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF VULTURE'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY FINALIST FOR THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN FICTION “A modern classic.” —The New York Times Book Review A young man's close-knit family is nearly destitute when his uncle founds a successful spice company, changing their fortunes overnight. As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, the family dynamic begins to shift. Allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things become “ghachar ghochar”—a nonsense phrase uttered by one meaning something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied. Elegantly written and punctuated by moments of unexpected warmth and humor, Ghachar Ghochar is a quietly enthralling, deeply unsettling novel about the shifting meanings—and consequences—of financial gain in contemporary India. “A classic tale of wealth and moral ruin.” —The New Yorker “Ghachar Ghochar introduces us to a master.” —The Paris Review Named a Best Book of the Year by the Guardian, Globe and Mail, and Publishers Weekly Shortlisted for the ALTA National Translation Award in Prose Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award

A chilling, wildly original novel from a major new voice from South Korea The Impossible Fairy Tale is the story of two unexceptional grade-school girls. Mia is “lucky”—she is spoiled by her mother and, as she explains, her two fathers. She gloats over her exotic imported color pencils and won’t be denied a coveted sweater. Then there is the Child who, by contrast, is neither lucky nor unlucky. She makes so little impression that she seems not even to merit a name. At school, their fellow students, whether lucky or luckless or unlucky, seem consumed by an almost murderous rage. Adults are nearly invisible, and the society the children create on their own is marked by cruelty and soul-crushing hierarchies. Then, one day, the Child sneaks into the classroom after hours and adds ominous sentences to her classmates’ notebooks. This sinister but initially inconsequential act unlocks a series of events that end in horrible violence. But that is not the end of this eerie, unpredictable novel. A teacher, who is also this book’s author, wakes from an intense dream. When she arrives at her next class, she recognizes a student: the Child, who knows about the events of the novel’s first half, which took place years earlier. Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale is a fresh and terrifying exploration of the ethics of art making and of the stinging consequences of neglect.

Jamaica Kincaid's brother Devon Drew died of AIDS on January 19, 1996, at the age of thirty-three. Kincaid's incantatory, poetic, and often shockingly frank recounting of her brother's life and death is also a story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered on the powerful, sometimes threatening figure of the writer's mother. My Brother is an unblinking record of a life that ended too early, and it speaks volumes about the difficult truths at the heart of all families. My Brother is a 1997 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

Longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature What happens when we attempt to exchange the life we are given for something better? Five people, in very different circumstances, from a domestic cook in Mumbai, to a vagrant and his dancing bear, and a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city, find out the meanings of dislocation, and the desire for more. Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.

What is it like to travel with others for adventure, lust and god? This delightful travelogue, in which Srinath Perur embarks upon ten conducted tours, is full of rich experiences: hanging on to a camel in the Thar Desert, joining thousands on a pilgrimage in Maharashtra, crossing living root bridges near Cherrapunji, rediscovering music while on the trail of Kabir, and a lot more. As much about people as it is about places, the book is also a reflection of the nature of popular travel today, which is marked by the packaging of experiences, the formation of tourist economies and compulsive picture-taking. How this influences tourists comes across vividly: in their creation of a mini India on a bus as they race through treasured sights in Europe; in their perfunctory devotion as they hop from temple to temple in Tamil Nadu; and in their ‘enjoying’ with sex workers far away from home. Ironic, and often comic, If It’s Monday It Must Be Madurai is an idiosyncratic portrait of India and her people.

New York Times bestseller! An unforgettable novel about a young Jewish woman growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century, told “with humor and optimism…through the eyes of an irresistible heroine” (People)—from the acclaimed author of The Red Tent. Anita Diamant’s “vivid, affectionate portrait of American womanhood” (Los Angeles Times), follows the life of one woman, Addie Baum, through a period of dramatic change. Addie is The Boston Girl, the spirited daughter of an immigrant Jewish family, born in 1900 to parents who were unprepared for America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End of Boston, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie’s intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can’t imagine—a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture, and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, to finding the love of her life, eighty-five-year-old Addie recounts her adventures with humor and compassion for the naïve girl she once was. Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Diamant’s previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world. “Diamant brings to life a piece of feminism’s forgotten history” (Good Housekeeping) in this “inspirational…page-turning portrait of immigrant life in the early twentieth century” (Booklist).