Overview

Disillusioned with modern romance, globe-trotting Meena tries an arranged marriage with Avi, an aspiring politician in Ohio. But when Avi's political opponent launches racist attacks, Meena and Avi are forced to defend their immigrant community, which narrowly understands its own traditions, and protect their increasingly shaky relationship. This is an intimate, funny, and heartbreaking novel about small-town America and the politics of marriage. FOR THE BLESSINGS OF VENUS AND JUPITER by Varun Gauri, a debut novel, is the winner of the 2024 Carol Trawick Fiction Prize from the Washington Writers' Publishing House.

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9781941551424

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An exuberant debut that is as bitingly funny as it is wise. - Tania James, author of Loot, Long-listed for the National Book Award A novel brimming with heart and humor and characters so richly imagined they feel like family. - Bret Anthony Johnston, Director of the Michener Center for Writers and author of We Burn Daylight This novel has everything--gorgeous writing, a pacy plot, irreverent satire, lovable characters, and moments of devastating heartache. Varun Gauri may be the wisest, most psychologically insightful of recent Indian-American writers. You will understand marriage, romance, and diaspora culture from an entirely new perspective. This is a brilliant, hilarious, and wonderfully intimate first novel. - Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life, winner of the 2015 Folio Prize and 2016 International Dublin Literary Award Varun Gauri's debut novel is a funny, surprising book that brings an unexpected and clever twist to immigration-and-assimilation stories. You'll miss it long after you've finished reading.- Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others, finalist for the Man Booker Prize This is an achingly intimate, irreverent novel about trying to find love in a marriage while failing to fit into an immigrant community filled with social anxieties and unrealistic aspirations. - Leeya Mehta, Director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center With picture-perfect detail, crackling dialogue, and charming characters, Varun Gauri has created a wholly original world. With great care and authenticity, this novel renders Indian and American customs, ancient and modern rites and practices, women's and men's hearts and bodies, and all that is involved in the pursuit of true love and a happy marriage, arranged or not.-Sheila Kohler, author of Open Secrets and Once We Were Sisters Varun Gauri captures the travails of a modern young Indian couple who find love the old-fashioned way, to the surprise of their families. The couple struggles with scheming relatives. Small-town politics. Real estate deals. Nationalist agendas. What could possibly go wrong? .- Susan Coll, author of Real Life and Other Fictions and former president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation

Author Information

Varun Gauri was born in India and raised in the American Midwest. After studying philosophy in college and public policy in graduate school, he worked for more than two decades on global poverty and human rights, publishing academic articles and books on development economics and behavioral economics. He now teaches at Princeton University and lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland. His short fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and recognized in Best American Nonrequired Reading. He was a Summer Writer-in-Residence at Washington, DC's The Inner Loop. This is his first novel.

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