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When Romola Mitra, a young Indian bride in the United States, stumbles upon a letter she was not meant to open, it changes her life. Decades later, her son, Amit, finds that letter among Romola's possessions and thinks he has discovered a secret about her. But secrets sometimes conceal deeper secrets. Sometimes the secrets that could break us apart are the same that glue us together.
Traveling back and forth in time, crisscrossing between India and the United States, the stories in For Here to Go follow Romola, her husband Avinash, and their son Amit, immigrants twice over, from childhood to adulthood to old age—through their struggles to bridge the chasms of geography, generation, and culture. Starting with the forbidden allure of a McDonalds burger and ending with a strong gin and tonic at a gay bar in the Midwest, with a secret stash of a great-grandmother's mango chutney in Calcutta in between, these stories about illicit pleasures and beloved betrayals add up to a book about our never-ending quest for a place called home—a place to find kinship and to, at last, belong.
"Starred Review. [The] truth becomes a canvas for a beautiful still-life portrait—and a masterpiece at that." - Kirkus
"Don't Let Him Know is a rich, evocative and brilliantly told tale of family, of loyalties, and of love that must stay secret. Sandip Roy has broken new ground in this tale of the modern Indian family. A lovely read." – Abraham Verghese
"Sandip Roy's compelling characters strive to negotiate the distances between continents, generations and sexualities; through a dazzling mosaic of narrative snapshots Roy captures the arcs of entire lifetimes." – Manil Suri
"In this beautiful debut, Sandip Roy explores the fine line between knowing too little and knowing too much, and between understanding too little and understanding too much. Spanning decades and traveling between continents, the novel is an inquiry about how our secrets shape us, and how, in turn, we redefine ourselves constantly to avoid being trapped by the secrets." – Yiyun Li
This information about Don't Let Him Know was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sandip Roy was born in India, spent many years in San Francisco, and writes for mainstream and ethnic media outlets in both the U.S. and India, including regularly for The Huffington Post . He is the culture editor at Firstpost.com, a contributor to New American Media, and a commentator for Morning Edition on NPR. He has also been a radio host on KALW San Francisco. This is his first book. Roy currently lives in Calcutta.
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