RaveThe Guardian (UK)An erudite and elegant meditation on modern life and modern love ... In writing about \"the slow and leisurely rot of a day\", with all its delights and anxieties... the author has created something remarkable.
Tommy Orange
RaveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)Tommy Orange confronts difficult subjects in mellifluous prose without veering into melodrama. He shows that storytelling is an intoxicant in itself, as powerful in its way as any substance.
Aube Rey Lescure
RaveThe Guardian (UK)Rey Lescure takes both real and constructed binaries... and cleverly closes the gap between them, showing how belonging – within a family, country, history – can be messier and knottier. She writes about migration and expatriation, alienation and ambition, family and multiracial identity, h/History and destiny with attentiveness and assertiveness ... Rey Lescure’s prose is cinematic, compelling, perceptive and poignant.
Maya Binyam
RaveThe Guardian (UK)Binyam uses these conversations as a vehicle for acute political commentary and philosophical musings on everything from foreign aid and hospitality to refuge and care, injustice and social responsibility, life and death ... The narrator doesn’t offer up much of himself in return, and Binyam similarly withholds, doing some stunning foreshadowing work ... With its unreliable narrator and its social commentary on the supposed binaries between two countries, the novel is at its best when exploring the ethics and mechanics of empathy.
Priya Guns
RaveThe Guardian (UK)The novel places systemic oppression and exploitation front and centre as Damani tosses out scathing critiques of the gig economy and white supremacy in much the same way that she throws out racist and sexist passengers ... With a full tank, and rage in her revolutionary heart, Damani drives towards a better world.
Fatimah Asghar
RaveThe Guardian (UK)Grief-soaked and gorgeous ... Asghar’s melodic and melancholy work is reminiscent of other novels written by poets ... She is not afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve – there is no stripping back of emotion. When We Were Sisters is not easy reading. Grief is not an easy feeling; it is lonely, slippery, elusive.
Anuradha Roy
RaveThe Guardian (UK)... carefully crafted ... it is Roy’s longstanding fascination with the figure of the artist, who fathoms new objects from what the earth has to offer, that is fully fleshed out in this novel ... What propels the book forward is this constant brink of possibility and potential for transformation ... Although set in the 80s, The Earthspinner captures the mood of sectarian strife and futile fanaticism in contemporary India. And yet it is a quiet, gentle work, never gratuitous; Roy does not care to make grand political statements, nor is she interested in presenting a \'novel of ideas\' ... Intricate yet intimate, the novel allows imagination to fill the rest – as all good fiction should ... The art of pottery is one of the most ancient human inventions, handed down from generation to generation. The Earthspinner also advocates for a gift: a harmonious sense of humanity. When forged with fire, both stand the test of time.
Rahul Raina
RaveThe Guardian (UK)... slices into the soul of contemporary Indian society ... This is a cinematic caper – HBO already holds film rights – and though Raina is highlighting expired dreams and inequality, he is always perceptive and playful. No one is beyond scrutiny, from the Americans to the Chinese. Social commentary meets standup comedy, as with a biting wit ...Raina stretches stereotype and cliche into incisive satire.
Sanjena Sathian
RaveThe Guardian (UK)... satirical and magical ... With a pacy plot and a protagonist you feel for, Gold Diggers blends magic, mythology, alchemy and melodrama into a story about anxiety, assimilation and ambition ... In some ways, Gold Diggers is a delightful concoction of the best of South Asia’s literary offerings, reminiscent of Hanif Kureishi’s irreverent humour in The Buddha of Suburbia and, more recently, the magic realism of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Salman Rushdie’s work. Despite these locatable lineages, Sathian has forged a narrative path entirely her own. She is not interested in social realism or satire for satire’s sake. Instead, she tackles familiar issues of mental health, the \'model minority\' trap and the generation gap with a fresh literary toolkit and voice. There’s also a foray into historical fiction ... Gold is among the rarest, most precious and malleable of metals. Sathian brings a golden touch to the 21st-century Indian American novel – stretching it through a reimagining of history and mythology, yet holding it close to her chest.
Deepa Anappara
RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksLike its nine-year-old narrator, Jai...Djinn Patrol, too, shape-shifts, matures from genre to genre: a murder mystery, a high-stakes detective story, a coming-of-age story, crime fiction, political satire. The plot is simple and more or less progresses straightforwardly ... it’s what Anappara does with language(s) that makes Djinn Patrol utterly and wholly distinctive, inventive, and immersive ... As a bilingual speaker and reader of Hindi and English, this felt like a bonus: to \'get\' the cues, clues, and cultural references; to always nod along in recognition; enjoy plenty of \'Aha!\' moments; and, most considerately, to not have one’s culture explained to oneself ... Anappara’s Jai is endearing, entertaining, and earnest; he keeps you on the edge of your seat ... What a child narrator affords Anappara is the ability to write about institutional injustice and negligence, unimaginable atrocities and harsh lived-realities ... And for this, we can hold Deepa Anappara’s story close to our hearts.
Tope Folarin
PositiveLos Angeles Review of Books...while the narrative is largely linear, it’s not always neat: spatio-temporal shifts, disappearing mothers, and multiple migrations make room for a more complex, unpredictable portrait of childhood. With every turn of the page, the pattern changes. Don’t get too comfortable, the narrative cautions the reader. What begins as a strictly first-person (confessional-style) autobiography, an exercise in memoir writing and memory keeping, shifts briefly to third-person—Folarin being playful on the page ... Folarin writes rage, remorse, and resignation delicately, with restraint. What begins as autobiography gives way to meta-fictional interventions.
