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by Monica Datta
The captivating and tragicomic story of the Chatterjee family and the catastrophe that tore them apart—for fans of Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads.
Anna Chatterjee has just been released from prison. Her husband, Prabir, has arrived to take her home and found her already gone; their flighty and artistic grown children, Neal and Nina are left to navigate the fallout both from Anna's disappearance and the trauma that splintered their lives years earlier. But as the story ricochets between past and present, the question looms: Where is Anna now?
As the story moves between decades and continents, Monica Datta considers the twentieth century experiment and its outcomes, often set against the testimony of the spritely Lacanian Jean-Louis Katz, whose life becomes entangled with their own as well as that of the Bengali psychoanalyst B.X. Roy.
With precision, range and deep emotional insight, Nebraska is an all-enveloping fictional experience not to be missed. It is a novel of characters who, while deeply separate, respond to the irresolvable questions that make us human.
"Robust, multifaceted ... In style and depth, the book recalls Pale Fire, Infinite Jest, and Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift, all big-swing metafictions that upend our understanding of history and humanity. A sharp, cross-continental tale of heartbreak and identity." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Not only is the novel pleasingly arch—Roy views Jean-Louis as a narcissist, partly due to his grating habit of introducing himself by his full name each time they meet—but it leaves the reader with much to ponder on the human condition, as when Jean-Louis tells Roy about the "profound sorrow" he saw in Annakali in the moment before she jumped. It's endlessly stimulating." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[A] deeply human story ... Datta plunges the reader into this complex and intricate narrative, rapidly moving between characters, timelines, and wide-ranging topics. Her tale demands careful attention and an adventurous spirit from the reader. An ambitious and layered family saga by an original voice." —Booklist
"Astonishing. A marvel of storytelling. Monica Datta's Nebraska is made of the stuff of great and uncompromising ambition. An exploration of a family enduring the oceanic and the unthinkable, with meandering byways into everything imaginable, from Lacanian psychoanalysis to postcolonial architecture to Icelandic sheepdogs. A novel at once ferociously intelligent, humane, and bursting at the seams with splendor." —Shobha Rao, author of Indian Country
"Monica Datta is a remarkable, original voice. This is a novel of labyrinthian depth and ambition, but ultimately, a thrilling, deeply human portrait of a family. I was left stunned, in the finest way possible, for a long time afterward." —Nayantara Roy, bestselling author of The Magnificent Ruins
This information about Nebraska 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.
Monica Datta is the author of Thieving Sun. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, Conjunctions, The New Inquiry and many other journals. She has received funding from the Divided City/Mellon Foundation, the Faber Arts, Sciences, and Humanities Residency of Catalonia, The Fine Arts Work Center, the Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts, Kundiman, OPERA America and Sewanee Writers' Conference.
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