For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus

by Varun Gauri

Overview

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 (2014), finalist for the Man Booker Prize

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. Winner of the 2024 Carol Trawick Fiction Award from the Washington Writers' Publishing House.

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

An exuberant debut that is as bitingly funny as it is wise. - Tania James, author of Loot.

A 2024 National Public Radio 'BOOKS WE LOVE' SELECTION

A 2025 FOREWORD FICTION AWARD-WINNER

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941551455
Publisher:	Washington Writers' Publishing House
Publication date:	10/08/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

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. FOR THE BLESSINGS OF JUPITER AND VENUS is his first novel.