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Overview
#1 International Bestseller
Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize & New American Voices Award
Amazon Top 10 Editors Pick
Named a Best Book of the Year by Elle, Cosmo, Real Simple, Glamour, Conde Nast, Readers Digest, & more
"A premise that would (and should) translate well to a prestige television series."--Elle
"The best...book I read this year was Gowda's timely and touching A Great Country."--San Diego Union-Tribune
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.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780063324343
- ISBN-10: 0063324342
- Publisher: Mariner Books
- Publish Date: March 2024
- Dimensions: 9.13 x 5.98 x 1.02 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.83 pounds
- Page Count: 256
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In her fourth novel, bestselling author Shilpi Somaya Gowda continues her empathic exploration of Indian American immigrant identity and experience. The central characters of A Great Country unexpectedly find themselves at the intersection of some of the nation’s most perilous social and political fault lines.
The novel opens on a Saturday night at a dinner party held to welcome Ashok and Priya Shah to their new neighborhood in Southern California’s wealthy Pacific Hills. The Shahs arrived in the U.S. some 20 years ago as penniless students and worked “their way up the socioeconomic ladder, as they were expected to as new immigrants.” This new life in the hills is a financial stretch, but they hope they can convince their longtime friends, also at the dinner, to make the move as well.
Meanwhile, the Shahs’ U.S.-born children are in trouble. Oldest daughter Deepa, a junior in high school, is being detained with her friend Paco after a protest at the U.S.-Mexico border turned violent. Their middle child, Maya, finds herself preoccupied with the Bakers, the Shahs’ extremely wealthy neighbors. And their 12-year-old son, Ajay, has just landed in jail, suspected of being a terrorist after flying a home-built drone next to the airport.
It’s Ajay’s arrest that sets the plot rolling like a ricocheting ball in a pinball machine. Ajay is scientifically gifted, brown skinned and tall enough to look older than he is. He might long ago have been diagnosed as autistic except that his father resisted the “culture of overdiagnosis in this country.” Ajay is misidentified by the press as a Muslim. The family is embarrassed when activists against police brutality take up their cause. Their inner domestic lives are blasted open in a media frenzy that makes most of their new neighbors suspicious of them.
If this sounds like a lot, it is. But somehow, in A Great Country, it mostly works. Gowda is superb at plotting and pacing, and the book spirits readers along. At the same time we learn enough of the histories of her characters to slow down and understand their dilemmas and the deep emotional stress these events place the family under. We feel for them and we will continue to think about them. Which, really, is just about the best we can hope for from a good read.
In her fourth novel, bestselling author Shilpi Somaya Gowda continues her empathic exploration of Indian American immigrant identity and experience. The central characters of A Great Country unexpectedly find themselves at the intersection of some of the nation’s most perilous social and political fault lines.
The novel opens on a Saturday night at a dinner party held to welcome Ashok and Priya Shah to their new neighborhood in Southern California’s wealthy Pacific Hills. The Shahs arrived in the U.S. some 20 years ago as penniless students and worked “their way up the socioeconomic ladder, as they were expected to as new immigrants.” This new life in the hills is a financial stretch, but they hope they can convince their longtime friends, also at the dinner, to make the move as well.
Meanwhile, the Shahs’ U.S.-born children are in trouble. Oldest daughter Deepa, a junior in high school, is being detained with her friend Paco after a protest at the U.S.-Mexico border turned violent. Their middle child, Maya, finds herself preoccupied with the Bakers, the Shahs’ extremely wealthy neighbors. And their 12-year-old son, Ajay, has just landed in jail, suspected of being a terrorist after flying a home-built drone next to the airport.
It’s Ajay’s arrest that sets the plot rolling like a ricocheting ball in a pinball machine. Ajay is scientifically gifted, brown skinned and tall enough to look older than he is. He might long ago have been diagnosed as autistic except that his father resisted the “culture of overdiagnosis in this country.” Ajay is misidentified by the press as a Muslim. The family is embarrassed when activists against police brutality take up their cause. Their inner domestic lives are blasted open in a media frenzy that makes most of their new neighbors suspicious of them.
If this sounds like a lot, it is. But somehow, in A Great Country, it mostly works. Gowda is superb at plotting and pacing, and the book spirits readers along. At the same time we learn enough of the histories of her characters to slow down and understand their dilemmas and the deep emotional stress these events place the family under. We feel for them and we will continue to think about them. Which, really, is just about the best we can hope for from a good read.