Bathroom Sagar

An Imagined Life

Eleven-year-old Akash Patil lives happily with his mother and extended family in a small, secluded community on the American East Coast—a haven for South Asian immigrants. However, an unforeseen tragedy in his town sets off a harrowing sequence of events, disrupting the peace within his family and close-knit neighborhood. As Akash struggles to cope with change, he discovers an alluring imaginative ability that allows him to escape his present affliction and relive his most cherished childhood memories. But once he recognizes that this power may be tainting his recollections more than preserving them, Akash is forced to decide whether or not the temporary comfort it provides is worth risking his understanding of himself and his past. Here begins an epic, poignant, and deeply emotional tale that weaves between the real and the surreal, travels from Manhattan to the San Francisco Bay Area, and follows Akash over several defining adolescent years. Tracing themes of nostalgia, loneliness, aging, culture, and community, An Imagined Life is an ambitious work of modern literature that skillfully exhibits the internal evolution of a young adult while presenting a sweeping tapestry of complex diasporic relationships.

Indian Country

In this fearless novel from the award-winning author of Girls Burn Brighter, a couple from India—so different from generations of white colonialists who came before them—move to Montana, only to discover how brutal and unforgiving hubris can be. Janavi and Sagar were never meant to end up married. Janavi is a wonderfully independent, young modern Indian woman. She works for an organization that helps street children, often lost to the world of poverty and human trafficking. Sagar is a trained hydraulic engineer, an expert in dam construction. He is the least favorite son, his parents never able to forgive him for an unspeakable act from his past. Sagar seeks refuge in his daydreams of one day finding hidden treasures in the fabled Indian river, the Ganges. Yet the two are forced together into an arranged marriage which neither of them wants. Even worse, Sagar has already accepted a job in America, in a strange place called Montana, where he will be in charge of dismantling a dam. Montana upends all their expectations. Sagar's white colleagues do not welcome him with open arms, and Janavi finds herself unable to forgive her sister back in India, whose betrayal led her to this marriage and this strange place. When a colleague of Sagar's is found drowned, Sagar is the obvious scapegoat. But is this death one in a long history of people of color paying the price for the white man's arrogance and expansionism? Just like the Ganges river that dominates Sagar's dreams, throughout the novel run short historical stories of settlers who conquered both the west and India, and who form the foundation upon which Sagar and Janavi stand. A bold, ambitious, stunningly beautiful yet brutal novel about colonialism, westward expansion, and the ramifications of both still rippling out today, Indian Country is a tour de force modern-day classic.

Bangladesh