Winner, 2020 IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) Bronze Medal for Multicultural Fiction

"In this exciting and moving debut collection, Murali Kamma explores the immigrant condition with compassion and candor. Readers, no matter what their background, will relate to these characters who are part Indian, part American, and wholly human."

-Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of

Before We Visit the Goddess and

The Forest of Enchantments

"A fresh, engaging collection from an excellent writer of short fiction. Most of us in this nation came originally from different places—geographically, socially, and spiritually. And while bodies can be easily transported, it takes longer for uprooted spirits to engage the new territory. Once arrived, each successive generation must deal with the ongoing consequences of that journey, and the changes it brings into their lives. In each of these tales, Murali Kamma engages the past and present dimensions of that struggle, illuminating, along the way, what it means to be Indian, American, and truly human."

-Roderick Clark, editor and publisher of Rosebud magazine

"A collection of powerful stories that opens up a larger world for the reader. The haunting quality and the emotional punch they deliver linger in the mind. This is a writer to watch."

-Bharti Kirchner, author of Darjeeling,

Goddess of Fire and Season of Sacrifice

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Bio

Author Bio

Murali Kamma is the managing editor of Khabar, a monthly magazine catering

to the Indian-American community in the Southeast. While he did dabble in

fiction as a youth (a few early stories appeared in an Indian magazine), it was

his life as an immigrant straddling two cultures—and his work as an editor—

that inspired him to pursue it more seriously. After graduating from Loyola

College in India, he continued his education at the State University of New

York at Buffalo. His stories have appeared in numerous journals, including

Rosebud, South Asian Review, and Lakeview International Journal of Literature

and Arts. He has enjoyed interviewing, among other authors, Salman Rushdie,

Anita Desai, William Dalrymple, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Pico Iyer, and

Pankaj Mishra. A naturalized U.S. citizen, he lives with his family in Atlanta.

Not Nativr

In this debut collection focusing on Indian immigrants in the United States, characters deal with conflict, growth, dislocation, and renewal in a new world. But their old world is present as well, and this “in-betweenness” shapes their lives. Once immigration involved leaving all behind, assuming a new identity with your new culture. Now we move back and forth—between continents, cities, our different mores no longer tidily compartmentalized, sometimes more migrant than immigrant. Generational splits in families mirror and are amplified by the gulf between new and old. Read More --->

"From the first paragraph, the very first sentence, Murali Kamma had me engrossed and engaged in the narrative, and my interest did not diminish until I got to the end of the book, twenty stories in all, to its very last sentence. Understated and unpretentious, this remarkable debut collection does not attempt to shock or surprise by 'gross and violent stimulants,' but relies on depicting plainly the life and situations that ordinary people face in their lives, and so it reaches out in ways that are likely to have a deeper and more lasting effect on readers than mere sensationalized subject or a dazzling surface experimentation with words and styles are likely to do." Read More --->

—Waqas Khwaja, Ellen Douglass Leyburn Professor of English, Agnes Scott College, Atlanta, author of Hold Your Breath and No One Waits for the Train