Praise for The Passenger Seat
“Unsettling and powerful . . . If the inciting episode reads as an overdetermined proof of male one-upmanship, Khurana’s execution of it is nevertheless gripping. Things go pear-shaped, then the pear goes rotten as the boys harbor resentments, thwart each other and secretively plot.”
—New York Times
"The Passenger Seat is structurally ingenious, rendered in unusual and fine colors, buffed to a shine. A perfect debut novel, explicit in its excellence! . . . it handles topics of universal interest—identity formation, alienation, power, loneliness—with daunting originality. Unlike a lot of so-called psychological thrillers, it is psychologically thrilling."
—Molly Young, New York Times
“[A] quietly frightening debut . . . The Passenger Seat inhabits both characters’ states of mind, at times mesmerizingly, depicting their braggadocio, their resentments and their paranoia. As their crime sinks in, Teddy realizes that ‘he and Adam are witnesses to each other.’ Are they accomplices to one another or antagonists? The book’s unknowns conjure a deep disturbance in the condition of male friendship.”
—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
"As this novel begins, Canadian teenagers Teddy and Adam drive north without a definite destination—but not before one of them purchases a rifle. Khurana shadows them as they speed toward their fate, shifting between their perspectives as they spar with each other and begin to break free from the conditions that have always defined their young lives."
—The Washington Post
“This is masterly storytelling—tense, poetic—as Khurana teases apart the psychology of nascent masculinity . . . Clichéd motives are eschewed, as is easy moralizing . . . The real brilliance of this novel lies in its ambiguity.”
—Kate Darach, Times Literary Supplement
“A startling and powerful experience . . . even days after finishing [The Passenger Seat], I find it invading my thoughts as though it has taken some kind of lasting root . . . This is a novel about not just these boys, or men, but the world that gives rise to them.”
—John Warner, Chicago Tribune
"The Passenger Seat is a disquieting and beautifully written warning of young adult masculinity gone terribly wrong. Strongly recommend to readers interested in chilling, psychological crime fiction and the concepts in Netflix’s popular drama Adolescence."
—Booklist
“[The Passenger Seat] brought to mind many words—nuanced, propulsive, literary, unsettling, haunting.”
—Emily Donaldson, Globe and Mail
“A poignant examination of male friendship, homosocial desire, and the trappings and broader social implications of masculinity.”
—Fitzcarraldo Editions/New Directions/Giramondo Novel Prize shortlist citation
"A deft blending of psychological suspense, dystopian friendship, toxic loneliness, and 'coming of age' masculinity when released from social and familial constraints, The Passenger Seat introduces Vijay Khurana, an author whose distinctive and narrative driven storytelling skills raise his novel to an impressive level of literary excellence."
—Midwest Book Review
"The Passenger Seat will both mesmerize and refuse comforting resolution."
—Literary Review of Canada
“[Khurana’s] ability to get under their skins allows uncommon access to the inner worlds of the kind of men that appear so frequently while the bulk of society tries in vain to understand what motivates them or to identify the specific social forces that created them.”
—Steven W. Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag
"Khurana employs classic tropes of the buddy road trip and crime novel/true crime genres while giving them a critical 21st-century twist—think In Cold Blood meets Grand Theft Auto with the psychological complexity and moral anguish of Dostoevsky and inputs from third-wave feminists."
—Tom Sandborn, The Tyee
“Confident, precise and simmering with intellectual energy. The Passenger Seat flirts with allegory but never renounces an urgent relationship to contemporary configurations of masculinity.”
—Catriona Menzies-Pike, The Guardian
"A tense and gripping power struggle of toxic masculinity, as the teenagers push each other further and further down a violent road of no return . . . this outstanding debut takes us inside the darkest and most vulnerable parts of their minds."
—Steph Harmon, The Guardian
"An unusual and deftly written literary thriller . . . Khurana’s prose enthralls, marked by a sharp social and sensory realism and a mature emotional intelligence. His ability to capture how physiological reactions often precede cognitive understanding is impressive."
—Books+Publishing
“With this striking novel, Khurana delivers a clear-eyed picture of the death-dealing form of masculinity euphemized as toxic and links its mindless violence to larger economic and ecological devastation.”
—Diane Josefowicz, Necessary Fiction
“In Khurana’s spare, rhythmic prose . . . the jagged edges of a species of male friendship are powerfully rendered.”
—The BC Review
"A perfectly paced and intensely compelling read. The Passenger Seat is an unforgiving, disturbing tale that resists any easy explanation, as Khurana considers the darkness of violence with a steely calm that refuses to let us look away."
—The Saturday Paper
"The structure of the book and its lyrical prose combine to make telling points about toxic male bonding and its relationship to sexist violence, all without any counterproductive lecturing or explicit judgements. The magisterial way that Khurana uses the classic elements of noir crime writing to challenge and subvert those very elements is impressive."
—Rabble
"A challenging novel that pushes against the elastic comfort of the expected, The Passenger Seat tests what makes a boy turn into a man and arrives in a territory both unexpected and certain."
—Foreword Reviews
"Two high school friends fall into a rite of poisonous passage toward toxic masculinity . . . A novel for those who like their grimness unadulterated by any glimmer of redemption."
—Kirkus Reviews
“Vijay Khurana's profound and propulsive The Passenger Seat is a thrilling, terrifying, devastating ride. This perfectly pitched tale of masculinity gone wrong exposes the ways that intimacy can so quickly veer into violence—yet it evades easy moral pronouncements at every turn. Khurana is a brilliant stylist who drives straight toward the heart. I would follow him down any road.”
—Elvia Wilk, author of Death by Landscape and Oval
"Vijay Khurana writes incredibly succinct and vigorous prose. His stories, always full of insight and depth, shine a light on the most nuanced and ambivalent corners of our lives."
—Yan Ge, author of Strange Beasts of China
“This book is simply great—an elegant novel written with disturbing emotional intensity and a sly, judicious sense of contemporary detail.”
—Lauren Oyler, author of Fake Accounts
