Reviews of Operation Monsoon

Praise from critics:
“Ramaya’s work embodies the experience of a globalized India. Her stories [are] strong and rich in detail and character.” —Las Vegas City Life

“Ramaya’s accomplished writing skills, which are thoughtful and philosophical, hold up a mirror to the human heart in an ever-changing world. One should not miss this unusually intense, emotional and artistically challenging story collection.” —Sanford Herald (NC)

“Ramaya’s carefully crafted characters, both the young emigrants and the parents and grandparents left behind, make this an exceptionally engaging collection.” —Booklist

“The author’s writing is lucid, and each story is different enough to showcase the diversity of her style….an emerging writer to watch." —Library Journal

"Through a realistic sense of impotence and frustration, through clarity of her narrative voices and the power of her prose, Ramaya weaves a living tapestry in which every reader will find myth, reality, and something of herself." —The Bloomsbury Review

"A striking, original, collection of multilayered short stories about life caught between the old and modern, between expectations and hopes, between dreams and reality." —Asian Week

Praise from writers:
“These beautiful stories of Shona Ramaya’s move with a patience that is uncommon. They are novelistic in feel, but perfectly conceived as pieces. The characters are rendered with great affection and nothing in their world simple.” —Percival Everett

“Like a spicy curry, the stories in Operation Monsoon stimulate and satisfy and enrich the reader. Shona Ramaya vibrantly re-creates the coils of cultures and families.” —Laura Kalpakian

“In her stories, Shona Ramaya combines Dickensian Realism with the dickens of Postmodern Formalism to create stories both minutely accurate and exceedingly expansive. One wishes to avoid the metaphor of ‘monsoon’ when speaking of Operation Monsoon, but, dang it, the stories do accumulate and gather and are finally torrential in their effects. Their arrival upon the reader—emotionally, intellectually, artistically–transforms and seasons the atmosphere, the climate.” —Michael Martone