This is the heartbreaking the story of the Mishras and their arrival to America from India. Told through the eyes of their youngest son Ajay, this tragic yet darkly comic novel tells of a family struggle, its anger, its guilt, and ultimately of its failure to hold itself together. FAMILY LIFE is unique in its sometimes very uncomfortable honesty. Our narrator holds a mirror up to the darkest thoughts we have in moments of difficulty, making this a reflective and memorable read.

AN OBEDIENT FATHER won the 2001 PEN/Hemingway Award and the 2001 Whiting Writers’ Award. Sharma has also published stories in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Quarterly, Fiction, the Best American Short Stories anthology, and the O. Henry Award Winners anthology.

Granta selected Akhil Sharma as one of the most interesting new voices in American fiction today. His short story “Cosmopolitan” as anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 1998, and was also made into an acclaimed 2003 film of the same name, which has appeared on the PBS series Independent Lens.

The writers below have already given the following quotes for FAMILY LIFE.

"Family Life will cut your heart to pieces but it will also make you rejoice. The language, the humor, the sophistication, the empathy, the insight -- all signal a new kind of literature about families and the bonds with which they hold us tight. Akhil Sharma's place among the best literary novelists of his generation is likewise secure." – Gary Shteyngart

"Family Life is a terse, devastating account of growing up as a brilliant outsider in American culture. It is a nearly perfect novel." – Edmund White, author of A Boy’s Own Story

"To use expressions like “extraordinarily moving” or “brilliantly observed” to describe this book is to do it a disservice, because here is a novel that seems to call for its own language of praise. Maybe it’s enough to say that Akhil Sharma’s “Family Life” is an immigrant story like no other: funny and dark, unrelenting and above all, true—in the pure way that only the rarest novel can achieve." – Nell Freudenberger, author of Lucky Girls

"Worth the wait: a wonderful novel by an excellent writer." – Mohsin Hamid, author of How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia and The Reluctant Fundamentalist

"Sharma is a rare master at charting the frailties and failures, the cruelties and rages, the altering moods and contradictions, whims and perversities of a tragic cast of characters.But this most unsentimental writer, with his skull and bones honesty leaves the reader, finally and surprisingly, moved.” – Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss

”Like a slender fire in the hand, Akhil Sharma's Family Life is incandescent. A story of migration from one state of being to another, this uncompromising testament to the human cost of love is exhilarating in its intelligence and unerring perception. Family LIfe is unforgettable; Akhil Sharma is a writer of genius and acuity.” – Jane Anne Phillips, author of Lark and Termite

“There's nothing like the pleasure of being devastated by a short novel. Like Jhumpa Lahiri, Akhil Sharma writes of the Indian immigrant experience with great empathy and a complete lack of sentimentality. Family Life is a dark and thrilling accomplishment by a wildly gifted writer.” – Anne Packer, author of Things Said or Done

"Miraculous, heartbreaking, courageous, and awe-inspiring. Our hero Ajay gives us an unforgettable portrait of his immigrant family and the trials they encounter in pursuit of the American dream. Full of elegance, sly humor, and penetrating truth, Ajay’s testimony reads like a mesmerizing confession from a dear friend who has resolved to hold nothing back. This novel reminds us that if family life might at times seem like a horror story, this is only because it is first and foremost a love story. Akhil Sharma’s virtuosic powers are on full display here." – Gabe Hudson, author of Dear Mr President

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kontakt:

Agata Żabowska

agata@literatura.com.pl