Critics' Opinion:
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Published May 2008
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Set in Malaysia, this spellbinding first novel by an acclaimed young writer introduces us to the prosperous Rajasekharan family as it slowly peels away its closely guarded secrets.
When the family's rubber-plantation servant girl is dismissed for unnamed crimes, it is only the latest in a series of precipitous losses that have shaken six-year-old Aashas life. In the space of several weeks her grandmother died under mysterious circumstances and her older sister, Uma, left for Columbia University, gone forever.
Circling through years of family history to arrive at the moment of Umas departure stranding her worshipful younger sister in a family, and a country, slowly going to pieces Evening Is the Whole Day illuminates in heartbreaking detail one Indian immigrant family's layers of secrets and lies, while exposing the complex underbelly of Malaysia itself.
"[T]he language bursts with energy, and Samarasan has a sure hand juggling so many distinct characters." - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. This book is destined to be highly sought after by fans of Zadie Smith and Arundhati Roy." - Library Journal.
"Samarasan has probably attempted too much in this overstuffed debut. But she scores impressively with the creation of an intimate, gossipy omniscient narrative voice that's the perfect vehicle for her slowly unfolding, intricately layered story." - Kirkus Reviews.
A magical, exuberant, tragicomic vision of post-colonial Malaysia reminiscent of Rushdie and Roy. In prose of acrobatic grace, Samarasan conjures a vibrant portrait, by turns intimate and sweeping, of characters and a country coming of age. The debut of a significant and trilling new talent." - Peter Ho Davies.
This information about Evening Is the Whole Day 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.
Preeta Samarasan was born and raised in Malaysia but moved to the United States in high school. After spending several years ostensibly working on a dissertation on gypsy music in France, but all the while writing fiction, she decided to switch tracks. She recently received her M.F.A. from the University of Michigan, where an early version of this novel received the Hopwood Novel Award' she also recently won the Asian American Writer's Workshop short-story award. Her debut is being compared to the works of Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, and Zadie Smith. Translation rights have been sold in 14 territories to date.
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