Tania James. (2009). Atlas of Unknowns. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Tania James. 2009. Atlas of Unknowns. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Tania James, Atlas of Unknowns. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009.

Tania James. Atlas of Unknowns. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009.

OverDrive Product Record

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1. • value: Education
2. • value: family
3. • value: relationships
4. • value: Friendship
5. • value: literary fiction
6. • value: family life
7. • value: sisters
8. • value: Maps
9. • value: Fiction
10. • value: mothers
11. • value: novels
12. • value: love
13. • value: Coming of age
14. • value: Identity
15. • value: families
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17. • value: power
18. • value: mystery
19. • value: art
20. • value: United States
21. • value: betrayal
22. • value: feminism
23. • value: New York
24. • value: Family Saga
25. • value: white teeth
26. • value: Chick Lit
27. • value: India
28. • value: literature
29. • value: Economics
30. • value: fiction books
31. • value: lies
32. • value: mother daughter
33. • value: travel books
34. • value: realistic fiction
35. • value: books for women
36. • value: zadie smith
37. • value: gifts for women
38. • value: gifts for her
39. • value: books for her
40. • value: gifts for artists
41. • value: travel gifts
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43. • value: books fiction
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creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: James, Tania
   • bioText: TANIA JAMES is the author of the novels The Tusk That Did the Damage and Atlas of Unknowns and the short story collection Aerogrammes. Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Granta, Guernica, One Story, A Public Space, and The Kenyon Review. She lives in Washington, D.C.
   • name: Tania James

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2009-04-21T00:00:00-04:00

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title

Atlas of Unknowns

fullDescription

An utterly irresistible first novel: The story of two sisters, the yearning to disappear into another country, and the powerful desire to return to the known world. • “Dazzling and deeply absorbing.... One of the most exciting debut novels since Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Linno is a gifted artist, despite a childhood accident that has left her badly maimed, and Anju is one of Kerala’s most promising students. Both girls dream of coming to the United States, but it is Anju who wins a scholarship to a prestigious school in New York. She seizes it, even though it means lying and betraying her sister. When her lie is discovered, Anju disappears. Back in Kerala, Linno is undergoing a transformation of her own. But when she learns of Anju’s disappearance, Linno strikes out farther still, with a scheme to procure a visa so that she can come to America to look for her sister and save them both.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: San Francisco Chronicle
   • content:

     "Dazzling and deeply absorbing. . . . One of the most exciting debut novels since Zadie Smith's White Teeth."

2. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times Book Review
   • content: "Delightful. . . . James writes with poise, sly humor, and an acuity both cultural and sensuous. . . . The characters' love for one other radiates off the page."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
   • content: "Wise and hilarious. . . . An astonishment of a debut, so radiant with life, with love, with good old human struggle that I had trouble detaching myself from its pages. . . . Tania James comes at you like everyone you've ever cared about, like everyone you've ever lost. . . . Her prevaricating bikini-waxing husband-dodging beautiful-crazy sisters followed me into my day, into my dreams. Take this book from someone, give it to someone--you will not go wrong. Atlas is that damned good."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
   • content: "A beguiling tale of treachery and remorse. . . . James is a perceptive writer whose insights into immigration, American life and Indian customs enrich this appealing tale."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Daily Mail (London)
   • content: "Reminiscent of Pulitzer prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri, this delightful debut is an insightful study of leave-taking and homecoming."
6. • premium: False
   • source: The Washington Times
   • content: "James brings a dazzling array of writerly skills to her debut novel. . . . She has a tender heart that feels for [her characters'] idiosyncrasies and yearnings, a sharp ear for dialogue, and an eye for the details of landscape and setting."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Ann Packer, author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier
   • content: "Tania James maps her characters' yearnings and missteps with the skills of a seasoned cartographer. Dazzling, original, witty, and poignant, [this] is one of the most beguiling first novels I've read in years."
8. • premium: False
   • source: The Star-Ledger (Newark)
   • content: "Not your standard growing-up-in-India story. . . . James has concocted a charming seriocomic blend of individuals, cultures and expectations in which every component retains its individuality."
9. • premium: False
   • source: New York Daily News
   • content: "Touching and absorbing."
10. • premium: False
    • source: The New Leader
    • content: "Warm, beguiling, refreshingly smart. . . . A great strength of James' novel is the depth and vibrancy of her characters. She treats them with dignity, never withdrawing the possibility of redemption, and even the most marginal figures turn out to be mysterious, surprising creatures."
11. • premium: False
    • source: Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
    • content: "With Atlas of Unknowns, Tania James proves herself a natural-born storyteller--she's the real deal."
12. • premium: False
    • source: The Missourian
    • content: "Painted with exquisite imagery. . . . Lines read as if they are extracted from poems, creating a story that is not only entertaining but a true piece of art."
13. • premium: False
    • source: Business World (India)
    • content: "One of the most engaging literary reads of the year. . . . James has made a brilliant debut, one which will be remembered for a long time."
14. • premium: False
    • source: The Courier-Jou
    • content: "As spectacular a debut as any author could hope for. . . . With keen insight and seminal prose James has fashioned a Bildungsroman of a family saga. . . . The breadth and depth of Atlas of Unknowns indicates that its author is as wise beyond her years as she is gifted."
15. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 2, 2009
      In this perfectly adequate tale of bicontinental love, betrayal and secrets, sisters Anju and Linno Vallara live in Kerala, India, raised by their father after their mother’s apparent suicide. Crippled Linno establishes herself as a talented artist, a skill Anju ruthlessly claims as her own, passing off Linno’s paintings as hers to win a scholarship to study art in New York. When Anju’s dishonesty is eventually exposed, her future crumbles and she runs away, surviving only due to her friendship with Bird, a stranger who carries a key to their mother’s mysterious past. Meanwhile, Linno, who once resigned herself to being her family’s servant, has built a career and, despite her sister’s betrayal, resolves to find Anju and bring her home. As that reunion looms, layers of lies and secrets are exposed until the reader, if not the sisters, glimpses the tangle of honesty and loyalties underpinning the story. James paints Kerala and immigrant New York with identical depth and ease, and the story is a readable balance of well-crafted plot and artful emotion.

16. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 15, 2009
      A student's odyssey from India to the United States and eventually back to India, a journey that raises personal and cultural questions about family, immigration and doing the right thing.
      
      Sisters Linno and Anju Vallara have been living a quiet life in Kerala with their father Melvin and their grandmother. Despite an accident that deforms her hand, Linno is an accomplished artist, and Anju is an academician. While visiting India, Miss Schimpf, from the Sitwell School in Manhattan, interviews 17-year-old Anju for a prestigious, all-expense-paid scholarship to the school, but the interview goes badly—that is, until Anju dazzles Miss Schimpf with some of her artwork. This seals the deal, and Miss Schimpf hails Anju as"a true Renaissance woman: an excellent student, a leader, and a brilliant artist." Trouble is that it's not Anju's artwork: Anju stole Linno's oeuvre in desperation to get the scholarship. At Sitwell Anju becomes something of a loner, but eventually she's befriended by Sheldon Fischer (aka"Fish") and holds out hope that he might even become a Real American Boyfriend. Instead, he betrays her secret to Miss Schimpf, and she is suspended from school. This ignominy leads Anju to run away and get a job at a beauty salon, hiding her status as she seeks legalization through a shifty immigration attorney. Meanwhile, back in India, the family also suffers, both from shame and worry. Even as Linno makes arrangements to come to the United States to find and recover her sister, Anju makes a parallel decision to reject American life and return home, seeking forgiveness and reconciliation.
      
      A touching debut novel with a range of tones, from the sweet to the sordid.

      (COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

17. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 15, 2009
      In Kerala, India, sisters Linno and Anju are raised by their father and grandmother, their mother having suspiciously drowned when they were young. Bad luck seems to follow the family when Linno loses her right hand in a firecracker accident; however, she overcomes her disability by learning to draw, gaining fame by painting pictures on the windows of local businesses. The younger Anju excels in academics and applies for a scholarship at a prestigious high school in New York. During her all-important interview, Anju passes off Linno's artwork as her own, thereby winning the scholarship. She moves to New York to attend the school, but all unravels when Anju's deception is discovered and, in shame, she runs away. While Anju works at a hair salon in order to earn enough money to hire an immigration lawyer, Linno and her father tackle the bureaucratic red tape involved in obtaining a U.S. visa, intent on going to New York to find Anju. This debut paints amusing and disturbing pictures of both cultures, highlighting the struggles experienced by those who find themselves on foreign soil. Sensitively told and completely engrossing. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 12/08.]Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA

      Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

18. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 15, 2009
      Following the lives of two Indian sisters coping with the subtle shame of otherness, James' incandescent debut novel is a skillfully nuanced examination of the immigrant experience from the perspectives of those who leave and those who are left behind. Tragically disfigured as a child, Linno forsakes formal education to nurture a surprising artistic talent, while her younger sister, Anju, excels academically and competes for a scholarship to a prestigious American private school. So strong is Anju's desire to leave their repressive society that she forges her name on her sister's artwork, a daring gamble that wins her the coveted ticket to a better life. Once in New York, however, Anju foolishly divulges her lie, loses her scholarship, and lives as a runaway, ashamed of being expelled and fearful of being deported. Meanwhile, Linno's art attracts the patronage of a savvy businesswoman who catapults her to international acclaim, a hollow victory giventhe uncertainty of Anju's whereabouts. Embracing multifaceted themes of cultural dissonance within a focused contemporary worldview, James writes with a silken elegance and solid assurance that will garner inevitable comparisons to Jhumpa Lahiri, accolades that are both apt and well-deserved.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)

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An utterly irresistible first novel: The story of two sisters, the yearning to disappear into another country, and the powerful desire to return to the known world. • “Dazzling and deeply absorbing.... One of the most exciting debut novels since Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Linno is a gifted artist, despite a childhood accident that has left her badly maimed, and Anju is one of Kerala’s most promising students. Both girls dream of coming to the United States, but it is Anju who wins a scholarship to a prestigious school in New York. She seizes it, even though it means lying and betraying her sister. When her lie is discovered, Anju disappears. Back in Kerala, Linno is undergoing a transformation of her own. But when she learns of Anju’s disappearance, Linno strikes out farther still, with a scheme to procure a visa so that she can come to America to look for her sister and save them...

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