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A Memoir
by Priyanka Mattoo
From a wry, insightful, and very funny new voice, here is one woman's peripatetic search for home, from Kashmir to England to Saudi Arabia to Michigan to Rome and, finally, to Los Angeles.
Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden house in the Himalayas, as were most of her ancestors. In 1989, however, mounting violence in the region forced Mattoo's community to flee. The home into which her family poured their dreams was reduced to a pile of rubble.
Mattoo never moved back to her beloved Kashmir—because it no longer existed. She and her family just kept packing and unpacking and moving on. In forty years, Mattoo accumulated thirty-two different addresses, and she chronicles her nomadic existence with wit, wisdom, and an inimitable eye for light within the darkest moments.
"Distinguished by its sharp wit and beating heart, this is a salve for wanderers of all stripes." —Publishers Weekly
"A moving yet occasionally disjointed personal exploration of the Indian diaspora." —Kirkus Reviews
"Enjoyably enlightening...Charming...The memoir's title is a translation of a Kashmiri phrase that speaks to the preciousness of rare things easily lost. Mattoo admirably rectifies some of these very losses." —Booklist
"I was enchanted by Mattoo's Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones, a remarkably vivid, moving epic of displacement and its aftermath. With brio, insight, and great warmth, this exceptional debut offers, as art can, a lasting home." —R. O. Kwon, author of Exhibit
"The magic of Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones is that it takes us all over the world but always feels like it could be happening right next door. Priyanka Mattoo's writing is steady and true and warm but also exquisitely insightful and precise. Her family is now our family. Her stories are a part of us. This book is an absolute treasure." —Jami Attenberg, author of I Came All This Way to Meet You
"Priyanka Mattoo has recreated the beloved, intoxicating Kashmir of her childhood in this beautiful memoir, and in doing so, renders the place immortal. I would follow Mattoo to the ends of the earth, because she would know what to eat there, and how to make a friend, and then sit me down and tell me a story." —Emma Straub, author of This Time Tomorrow
This information about Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones 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.
Priyanka Mattoo is a writer, filmmaker, former talent agent, and a cofounder of Earios, a women-led podcast network. She is a contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, and a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. Mattoo holds degrees in Italian and law from the University of Michigan and currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and kids.
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