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A Novel
by Malavika Kannan
Malavika Kannan establishes herself as an inimitable voice of Gen Z in this piercing coming-of-age debut novel.
Which comes first: experience or narrative? Rishi thinks she knows the answer as she arrives on campus for her first year at Stanford. A burnt-out youth climate activist, she used to want to save the world, but now she just wants to have gay sex. Her plan is set―she's going to leave behind the strict trappings of her Indian American childhood in Florida, study literature, experiment with love, and write all about it. Within a few months, she makes her first best friend, falls in love with her situationship, and promptly gets her heart broken.
What is not a part of Rishi's plan is the onset of the COVID pandemic. As the outside world becomes a terrifying place, she increasingly finds solace in the friendships she's made. Instead of virtual college, however, Rishi and her classmates join a farm collective, where their political discussions and growing disillusionment collide with sexual tension and responsibility. It's only when those relationships start fracturing under the stress of careless decisions, unrequited crushes, jealousies, and, yes, unprecedented times, that Rishi begins to question her own story.
Unprecedented Times captures the beauty, humor, pain, and straight-up chaos that exist in relationships between best friends and lovers, mothers and daughters, and between storytellers and themselves. Malavika Kannan's fresh, arresting novel is a testament to the power of self-narrative for Gen Z American women: of writing oneself into existence where no previous script exists.
"Tender and sharp-witted ... Readers will find much to love in this smart and searching coming-of-age tale." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Razor-sharp ... Rishi is a relatable narrator, letting the reader in on both her most vulnerable thoughts and most biting social commentary. A sparkling work of fiction, this story feels like pages ripped straight from your funniest friend's diary." ―Booklist (starred review)
"Unprecedented Times holds all the youth and assurance of a fresh new day. Malavika Kannan writes with a rare fearlessness about what the world promises versus what our lives actually turn out to be. A deeply propulsive read, as well as wonderfully insightful and funny. Unprecedented Times is a bright and lovely work." ―Kristen Arnett, bestselling author of Stop Me if You've Heard This One
"Unprecedented Times made me laugh, cry, and rage―often within the same paragraph ... Kannan's voice is hilarious and generous, and her incisive portrayal of navigating college as a second-generation immigrant kept me up late into the night. I absolutely could not put this book down." ―Lamya H, award-winning author of Hijab Butch Blues
This information about Unprecedented Times 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.
Malavika Kannan (b. 2001) is a Tamil American writer whose work appears in The Nation, The Washington Post, New York, Teen Vogue, and elsewhere. Her villain origin story is that, as a teenager in Florida, she organized for generational movements such as March for Our Lives and the Women's March. Her YA novel All the Yellow Suns was published in 2023. She graduated from Stanford University and now moonlights as a gay socialite in Brooklyn, where she co-hosts the popular mutual aid supper club Girls Eat Girls.
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