Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2010
240 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of 9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair.
When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There's little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, "one amazing thing" from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself.
"A storyteller of exquisite lyricism an compassion, Divakaruni weaves a suspenseful, astute, and unforgettable survivors' tale." - Booklist
"Despite moments of brilliance, this uneven novel, while vigorously plumbing themes of class struggle, disillusionment, and guilt, disappoints with careless and unearned epiphanies." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Writing with great sensitivity, Divarkaruni presents snapshots that speak volumes about the characters, so unexpectedly drawn together. Highly recommended." - Library Journal
"Compassionate stories, many of them inspired, suspended in half of a novel." - Kirkus Reviews
"One Amazing Thing collapses the walls dividing characters and cultures; what endures is a chorus of voices in one single room." - Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake
"I was up very late. I read straight through because this is the sort of book that pulls you along. Divakaruni is so adept with her characterizations...I wanted to be in any of the beauty salons described so lovingly. I wanted to eat the bits of food described with such delicacy." - Louise Erdrich, author of Love Medicine and A Plague of Doves
"Ingeniously conceived and intelligently written, this novel is a fable for our time. The characters, troubled or shattered by their past, vibrate with life whenever they begin to speak. The book is a fun read from the first page to the last." - Ha Jin, author of A Free Life and the National Book Award-winning Waiting
"Chitra Divakaruni understands the power of stories to heal us, make us laugh, and comfort us in the most difficult of circumstances. One Amazing Thing is one powerful and beautifully written book. I loved it, and I'm sure that readers everywhere will embrace it too." - Lisa See, author of Shanghai Girls
This information about One Amazing Thing 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.
© Anand Divakaruni
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling author, activist, and professor. Her work has been published in over fifty magazines, including The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and included in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. Her books have been translated into twenty-nine languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Russian, and Japanese. Several have been used for campus-wide reads and made into films and plays. She teaches at the University of Houston.
Author Interview
Link to Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Website
Name Pronunciation
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: chi-TH-rah ban-ERH-jee deewah-karoonee
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