Kirjahaku

"A very fine writer, funny, intelligent, versatile and, on occasion, unexpectedly profound."--The Washington Post Book World "MUKHERJEE IS FEARLESS . . . DARING AND WITTY . . . Take the wild ride with Debby DiMartino from Albany to San Francisco, from lost child to masked avenger."--The Boston Globe "POWERFULLY WRITTEN . . . Debby has no memory of her birth parents. All she knows is that she was born in a remote Indian village, the daughter of a hippie back-packing mother and a mysterious Eurasian father, both of whom have disappeared almost without a trace. . . . Her quest for her biological parents turns into an obsession. . . . Leave It to Me . . . shows Mukherjee at the peak of her craft. . . . Mixing the Greek myth of Electra with the Indian myth of Devi, she sends Devi/Debby careening down on the Bay Area like an elemental force of vengeance."--San Francisco Chronicle "DEVI IS A BRILLIANT CREATION--hilarious, horribly knowing and even more horribly oblivious--through whom Bharati Mukherjee, with characteristic and shameless ingenuity, is laying claim to speak for an America that isn't 'other' at all."--The New York Times Book Review "STUNNING . . . An astute, ironic, and merciless insight into an aberrant version of the American dream."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Enchanting Mukherjee's pitch-perfect ear for character and mood and her storytelling gifts capture the exhilarating restlessness of a young Indian woman's pursuit of happiness. Miss New India illuminates as brilliantly as it entertains." --Amy Tan Anjali Bose's prospects don't look great. Born into a traditional lower-middle-class family, she lives in a backwater town with only an arranged marriage on the horizon. But her ambition, charm, and fluency in language do not go unnoticed by her charismatic and influential expat teacher, Peter Champion. And champion her he does, both to powerful people who can help her along the way and to Anjali herself, stirring in her a desire to take charge of her own destiny. So she sets off to Bangalore, India's fastest-growing metropolis, and soon falls in with an audacious and ambitious crowd of young people, who have learned how to sound American by watching shows like Seinfeld in order to get jobs in call centers, where they quickly out-earn their parents. And it is in this high-tech city where Anjali -- suddenly free of the confines of class, caste, and gender -- is able to confront her past and reinvent herself. Of course, the seductive pull of life in the New India does not come without a dark side . . . "Each character fascinates, and every detail glints with irony and intent, as Mukherjee brilliantly choreographs her compelling protagonist's struggles against betrayal, violence, and corruption in a dazzling plot." --Booklist, starred

At the heart of this remarkable new novel by the award-winning author of The Middleman and Other Stories and Jasmine are issues of culture, identity, and familial loyalty. Comparable to The Joy Luck Club in its honest portrayal of the American immigrant experience, Desirable Daughters follows the diverging paths taken by three Calcutta-born sisters as they come of age in a changing world. Tara, Padma, and Parvati were born into a wealthy Brahmin family presided over by their doting father and his traditionalist mother. Intelligent and artistic, the girls are nevertheless constrained by a society with little regard for women. Their subsequent rebellion will lead them in different directions, to different continents, and through different circumstances that strain yet ultimately strengthen their relationship. Moving effortlessly between generations, Mukherjee weaves together fascinating stories of the sisters' ancestors, their childhood memories, and dramatic scenes from India's history.

In piecing together her ancestor's transformation from a docile Bengali Brahmin girl-child into an impassioned organizer of resistance against the British Raj, the contemporary narrator discovers and lays claim to unacknowledged elements in her "American" identity.

Jasmine, a young widow in India, moves to the United States to begin a new life

In 1988, with her collection The Middleman and Other Stories, Bharati Mukherjee became the first naturalized American citizen to win the National Book Critics Circle Award.Now reissued with an introduction by Pushcart Prize winner Madhuri Vijay, these characters and their stories shed new light on an America increasingly defined by movement, transience, fragmentation, and reinvention. As Vijay writes in her introduction, these characters are "constantly on the move, constantly in flux, shifting between lovers, jobs, nations, apartments, or all four at the same time." An aristocratic Filipina negotiates a new life for herself with an Atlanta investment banker. An Italian woman from New Jersey has an uncomfortable Thanksgiving when she brings her new Afghani boyfriend home to meet the family. And in the title story, an Iraqi Jew whose travels have ended in Queens suddenly finds himself an unwitting guerrilla in a South American jungle. Passionate, comic, violent, and tender, these stories draw us into the center of a cultural fusion, moments glowing with the energy and exuberance of a society remaking itself.

National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Bharati Mukherjee has long been known not only for her elegant, evocative prose but also for her characters--influenced by ancient customs and traditions but also very much rooted in modern times. In The Tree Bride, the narrator, Tara Chatterjee (whom readers will remember from Desirable Daughters), picks up the story of an East Bengali ancestor. According to legend, at the age of five Tara Lata married a tree and eventually emerged as a nationalist freedom fighter. In piecing together her ancestor's transformation from a docile Bengali Brahmin girl-child into an impassioned organizer of resistance against the British Raj, the contemporary narrator discovers and lays claim to unacknowledged elements in her 'American' identity. Although the story of the Tree Bride is central, the drama surrounding the narrator, a divorced woman trying to get back with her husband, moves the novel back and forth through time and across continents.

Jasmine Vijh, widowed in India at 17, flees to America. This is the story of her daring travels, her painful yet exhilarating cross-cultural metamorphosis and, eventually, the home she finds in Iowa where she accepts how inextricably her fate has become part of America's.