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Event
Karan Mahajan in conversation with Ruth Galm
Presented by Peninsula Arts & Letters and Kepler's Books
Friday, March 25, 2016
7:30pm
Seating Area opens at 6:30pm
Kepler's Books
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025
"The Association of Small Bombs"
"Urgent and masterful, this novel shows us how bystander, bomber, victim, and survivor will forever share a patch of scorched ground."
Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master's Son
For readers of Mohsin Hamid, Dave Eggers, Arundhati Roy, and Teju Cole, The Association of Small Bombs is an expansive and deeply humane novel that is at once groundbreaking in its empathy, dazzling in its acuity, and ambitious in scope.
When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana, two Delhi schoolboys, pick up their family's television set at a repair shop with their friend Mansoor Ahmed one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning. A bombone of the many "small" bombs that go off seemingly unheralded across the worlddetonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys. Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb. After a brief stint at university in America, Mansoor returns to Delhi, where his life becomes entangled with the mysterious and charismatic Ayub, a fearless young activist whose own allegiances and beliefs are more malleable than Mansoor could imagine. Woven among the story of the Khuranas and the Ahmeds is the gripping tale of Shockie, a Kashmiri bomb maker who has forsaken his own life for the independence of his homeland.
Mahajan writes brilliantly about the effects of terrorism on victims and perpetrators, proving himself to be one of the most provocative and dynamic novelists of his generation.
Karan Mahajan's first novel, Family Planning, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize and published in nine countries. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR's All Things Considered, The New Yorker online, The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, and Bookforum. Mahajan is a graduate of Stanford University and the Michener Center for Writers.
Ruth Galm was born and raised in San Jose, California, earned an MFA from Columbia University, and has been in San Francisco ever since. Her short fiction has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Indiana Review, and Joyland, and she is a past resident of the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Her debut novel, Into the Valley, was published by Soho Press in August 2015.
This event is free but please register here.
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LocationKepler's Books (View)
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: Yes! |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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