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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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SOUTH HAVEN

Hirsh Sawhney

Siddharth Arora lives an ordinary life in the New England suburb of South Haven, but his childhood comes to a grinding halt when his mother dies in a car accident.
Siddharth soon gravitates toward a group of adolescent bullies, drinking and smoking instead of drawing and swimming. He takes great pains to care for his depressive father, Mohan Lal, an immigrant who finds solace in the hateful Hindu fundamentalism of his homeland and cheers on Indian fanatics who murder innocent Muslims. When a new woman enters their lives, Siddharth and his father have a chance at a fresh start. They form a new family, hoping to leave their pain behind them.

South Haven is no simple coming-of-age tale or hero's journey, blurring the line between victim and victimizer and asking readers to contend with the lies we tell ourselves as we grieve and survive. Following in the tradition of narratives by Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz, Sawhney draws upon the measured lyricism of postcolonial writers like Michael Ondaatje but brings to his subjects distinctly American irreverence and humor.

Hirsh Sawhney's writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Financial Times, Outlook, and numerous other periodicals. He is the editor of Delhi Noir, a critically acclaimed anthology of original fiction, and is on the advisory board of Wasafiri, a London-based journal of international literature. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and teaches at Wesleyan University. South Haven is his debut novel.
Available products
Book

Published 2016-06-16 by Akashic Books

Book

Published 2016-06-16 by Akashic Books

Comments

[T]his luminous debut . . . captures precisely the heartache of growing up.

Hirsh Sawhney writes with wit and tenderness about a harsh childhood. And such is his power of insight that this novel, set in a New England suburb, manages to illuminate a larger landscape of cruelty and torment.

South Haven by Hirsh Sawhney was selected for the highly competitive Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program (summer 2016 season).

It’s no secret that grief makes us vulnerable, but Hirsh Sawhney’s perceptively rendered South Haven presents a volatile mix of second-generation migration, sadness, and cruelty in suburban America. South Haven is bold, accessible, funny, and heartbreaking.

A powerful story . . . a universal look at the complexity of how people wrestle with guilt and blame amid tragic loss.

South Haven is an affecting tale of a family’s loss, a child’s grief, and the search for solace in all the wrong places. Hirsh Sawhney is an incandescent voice in fiction.