Keynote
In Shona Ramaya's tough, lyrical, and ironic stories of a globalized India, pop culture and history fuse
Book Title
Operation Monsoon
Subtitle
Stories
Cover Image
- “A provocative collection of 19 edgy essays that reflect 19 unique visions. . . . The overarching recognition that emerges from this compelling forum is that the one home these insightful writers, and their grateful readers, can count on is literature.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist
Body
When you bring on the rain, everything changes, my grandmother had said. It's not the same place anymore. The rain takes over.
Set in a globalized community of merging cultures, Operation Monsoon offers an India where Hindu epics are broadcast as soap operas and kidney donations have supplanted reincarnation. These intricate, multilayered accounts show how people use stories to make sense of their lives in an incomprehensible world. A girl romanticizes about a distant cousin, a terrorist in exile, amid the intoxicating Calcutta monsoons. A crippled woman runs a matchmaking agency on the Internet. An IT consultant finds himself on a strange journey in America as he enters the shadow world of "bodyshopping."
Shona Ramaya, praised by Cosmopolitan as a "born storyteller" and by Mira Nair as a writer who "has the rare talent of knowing her characters so well that when you finish the book, you feel they have spoken to you," presents an India of radical transitions, exploring junctures where history or myth cross paths with contemporary events.
Set in a globalized community of merging cultures, Operation Monsoon offers an India where Hindu epics are broadcast as soap operas and kidney donations have supplanted reincarnation. These intricate, multilayered accounts show how people use stories to make sense of their lives in an incomprehensible world. A girl romanticizes about a distant cousin, a terrorist in exile, amid the intoxicating Calcutta monsoons. A crippled woman runs a matchmaking agency on the Internet. An IT consultant finds himself on a strange journey in America as he enters the shadow world of "bodyshopping."
Shona Ramaya, praised by Cosmopolitan as a "born storyteller" and by Mira Nair as a writer who "has the rare talent of knowing her characters so well that when you finish the book, you feel they have spoken to you," presents an India of radical transitions, exploring junctures where history or myth cross paths with contemporary events.
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About the Author
Credit: Dean Batchelder
Praise
- “A thought-provoking collection.”—Library Journal
- “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)
- “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
