Akhil Sharma. (2017). A Life of Adventure and Delight. W. W. Norton & Company.

Akhil Sharma. 2017. A Life of Adventure and Delight. W. W. Norton & Company.

Akhil Sharma, A Life of Adventure and Delight. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Akhil Sharma. A Life of Adventure and Delight. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

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1. • value: family life
2. • value: realism
3. • value: Contemporary
4. • value: India
5. • value: Diaspora
6. • value: immigrant fiction
7. • value: asian literature
8. • value: indian literature
9. • value: new yorker
10. • value: if you sing like that for me
11. • value: international dublin literary award

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Sharma, Akhil
   • bioText:

     Akhil Sharma is the author of Family Life, a New York Times Best Book of the Year and the winner of the International DUBLIN Literary
     Award and the Folio Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Award Stories. A native of Delhi, he lives in New York City and teaches English at Rutgers University–Newark.

   • name: Akhil Sharma

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title

A Life of Adventure and Delight

fullDescription

A Life of Adventure and Delight delivers eight masterful stories from dazzlingly original and critically acclaimed author Akhil Sharma.

Hailed as a storyteller whose fiction is "a glowing work of art" (Wall Street Journal), Akhil Sharma is possessed of a narrative voice "as hypnotic as those found in the pages of Dostoyevsky" (The Nation). In A Life of Adventure and Delight, Sharma delivers eight masterful stories that focus on Indian protagonists at home and abroad and that plunge the reader into the unpredictable workings of the human heart. A young woman in an arranged marriage awakens one day surprised to find herself in love with her husband. A retired divorcé tries to become the perfect partner by reading women's magazines. A man's longstanding contempt for his cousin suddenly shifts inward when he witnesses his cousin caring for a sick woman. Tender and darkly comic, the protagonists in A Life of Adventure and Delight deceive themselves and engage in odd behaviors as they navigate how to be good, how to make meaningful relationships, and the strengths and pitfalls of self-interest. Elegantly written and emotionally immediate, the stories provide an intimate, honest assessment of human relationships between mothers and sons, sons and lovers, and husband and wives from a dazzlingly original, critically acclaimed writer.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: New York Times Book Review
   • content: Focusing exclusively on Indian characters, both in Delhi and in the New York metropolitan area, [Sharma] brings a keen cultural awareness to each of these stories.... [A Life of Adventure and Delight is] perceptive, humane, and pointed.
2. • premium: False
   • source: Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer
   • content: [Sharma's] stories are beautiful, deceptively simple, and potentially dangerous.
3. • premium: False
   • source: David Sedaris, best-selling author of Naked
   • content: What an exciting and original writer this is, and what a knock-out collection.
4. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content: These stories have a psychological acuity that redeems their dark worldview.
5. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: Those seeking quiet moments of revelation will find them here.
6. • premium: False
   • source: Angel City Review
   • content: A melancholy and at turns tender exploration of the human psyche at its most vulnerable.
7. • premium: False
   • source: HelloGiggles
   • content: If you love short story collections, this one's for you.... Author Akhil Sharma's characters aren't perfect—they wrestle with belonging, tradition, and temptation—but they're heartbreakingly real and relatable, even at their worst.
8. • premium: False
   • source: Adam Johnson, National Book Award–winning author of Fortune Smiles
   • content: The stories in Akhil Sharma's A Life of Adventure and Delight sweep across the page like monsoons—filled with energy, chaos, surprise, and rapture, they ravish and transform the very nature of reading.
9. • premium: False
   • source: Yiyun Li, author of Gold Boy, Emerald Girl and The Vagrants
   • content: Readers wade into these stories as though stepping into a calm river only to be caught by an undercurrent of the most devastating kind—the demand of everyday existence. Akhil Sharma's words touch the deep experience that often remains wordless. He is truly the Chekhov of our time.
10. • premium: False
    • source: Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls and Everybody's Fool
    • content: Akhil Sharma's deceptively simple diction has a way of cutting straight to the human bone. The stories in A Life of Adventure and Delight are revelations, every one.
11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      May 15, 2017
      The eight stories in this collection from the author of Family Life follow modern Indians at home and abroad as they face the trials of marriage, parenthood, and assimilation. In “Cosmopolitan,” the solid first story, a husband abandoned by his wife and daughter begins a short-lived affair with his reticent neighbor. In “Surrounded by Sleep,” a young boy reevaluates his worldview after a freak accident forces his brother into a coma. A wife in an arranged marriage tries to recapture the fleeting moment she felt love for her husband in “If You Sing Like That For Me.” The title story is the collection’s most accomplished, relating the romantic highs and lows of an Indian PhD student in New York City with wry humor and psychological complexity. While there are moments of genuine insight and heartbreak, the collective effect of the stories seems subdued to a fault. Those seeking quiet moments of revelation will find them here.

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 15, 2017
      Neither adventure nor delight await the characters of this ironically titled collection.The first line of the title story sets the scene: -The side door of the police van slid open, rattling, and he was shoved inside.- Gautama has been arrested for hiring a prostitute; -like many foreign students in America who are living away from home for the first time,- he quickly gravitated to the illicit joys offered on the internet. After his brush with the law, he begins dating another Indian grad student. When his parents reject his choice, he ends up back on Craigslist. -Adventure and delight-? Hmmmm. An apter phrase might be -bad luck and isolation,- and that is the real throughline in this collection of stories. In -Cosmopolitan,- an Indian man who has been abandoned by his wife and daughter begins an affair with his neighbor Mrs. Shaw after she stops by to borrow a lawn mower. Despite his assiduous study of women's magazines, Mrs. Shaw remains a mystery. He also attempts to win some friends in the Indian expat community by memorizing a book called 1,001 Polish Jokes and changing the Poles to Sikhs. It doesn't work. The narrator of -If You Sing Like That for Me- experiences love in her arranged marriage only once, for just a few hours. (Once you've met her husband, you'll sympathize.) -You Are Happy?- is the story of a boy who is miserable--his mother is an alcoholic who is eventually sent to India to be murdered by her own family. In -A Heart Is Such a Heavy Thing,- the protagonist's 12-year-old brother threatens to hang himself on the day of the nuptials. -If you want to stop the wedding, remember to kill yourself before, not after, we are married,- advises the groom-to-be. A short story which seems to have been the origin of Sharma's breakout novel (Family Life, 2014)--same names, same swimming accident, same brain-dead brother--is included as well. Filled with a strong sense of the odds against any kind of happiness, these stories have a psychological acuity that redeems their dark worldview.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      February 15, 2017
      

      You can expect Sharma's story collection to be good. Not only have his pieces appeared in Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Award Stories but he proved himself when he debuted with Family Life, a New York Times Best Book and winner of the International Dublin Literary Award. From a wife in an arranged marriage who finds that she loves her husband to a man who comes to admire a cousin tending a sick woman, the stories feature Indian protagonists at home and abroad. Most of these pieces appeared in The New Yorker or Atlantic Monthly.

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

14. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 15, 2017
      

      This short story collection by the author of Family Life, an International Dublin Literary Award winner, depicts Indians at home and abroad. A number of the pieces involve lonely Indian men in the United States negotiating relationships with women. In "Cosmopolitan" and "The Well," the women are white, while in "A Life of Adventure and Delight," the protagonist is at a loss when it comes to dating an Indian woman he meets at New York University. The men consider dating as a staged activity that precedes an arranged marriage and struggle to adapt to U.S. norms. Arranged marriages are the topic in "If You Sing Like That for Me," told from a wife's perspective, and "A Heart Is a Heavy Thing," centered on the groom's family. Things don't go well in "You Are Happy?" when an arranged marriage sends a young family to America and the unhappy wife tries to drink herself to death. The overarching theme of this collection is family; regardless of their status, neither the men nor the women exist independently of extended family members. Conflicts are recognizable across cultural boundaries, but they are steeped in Indian culture and relationships. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in diverse fiction and short stories. [See Prepub Alert, 1/23/17.]--Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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A Life of Adventure and Delight delivers eight masterful stories from dazzlingly original and critically acclaimed author Akhil Sharma.

Hailed as a storyteller whose fiction is "a glowing work of art" (Wall Street Journal), Akhil Sharma is possessed of a narrative voice "as hypnotic as those found in the pages of Dostoyevsky" (The Nation). In A Life of Adventure and Delight, Sharma delivers eight masterful stories that focus on Indian protagonists at home and abroad and that plunge the reader into the unpredictable workings of the human heart. A young woman in an arranged marriage awakens one day surprised to find herself in love with her husband. A retired divorcé tries to become the perfect partner by reading women's magazines. A man's longstanding contempt for his cousin suddenly shifts inward when he witnesses his cousin caring for a sick woman. Tender and darkly comic, the protagonists in A Life of Adventure and Delight deceive themselves and...

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