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Published Oct 2013
240 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
In twelve startling and vividly imagined stories, Ranbir Singh Sidhu overturns the lives of ordinary Indians living in America to bring us a bold debut collection, Good Indian Girls.
A woman attends a de-cluttering class in search of love. A low-level, drunkard diplomat finds himself mysteriously transferred to the Consulate in San Francisco, where everyone believes he is a great, lost poet. An anthropological expedition searching for early human fossils goes disastrously wrong and the leader turns to searching for the very first sounds made by humans. The wife of a retiring Consul pays tribute to her pet python by preparing to serve him to her dinner guests. A strange skull discovered outside an orphanage results in the creation of a cult around one of the charismatic young residents.
Unsettling, moving, insightful, humorous — these beautifully written stories travel between despair and redemption as they illuminate the lives of often deeply flawed characters, and mark the emergence of a major new voice in American fiction.
"Starred Review. Smart, provocative and poignantly disturbing, this collection, the author's U.S. debut, signals a writer to watch." - Kirkus
"[Sidhu] manages to portray his characters as uniquely Indian without losing sight of their individuality, offering small, piercing looks into the humanity that resides in every situation and person, no matter how strange." - Publishers Weekly
"[Sidhu's] propensity for the morose will be off-putting for some but is sure to please those with a taste for black humor and shades of the diabolical." - Booklist
"Whenever I pick up a story by Ranbir Sidhu, I feel as though I've been released from the cedarwood closet of literature into the fresh air of active creation." - Harry Mathews, author of My Life in CIA, Cigarettes and The Journalist
"Ranbir Sidhu is imaginative, with a dry, sly wit, very intelligent, and owns a wicked sensibility, all of which makes his fiction smart, daring, sensitive to human perversity, and keen in its observations." - Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, A Comedy, and No Lease On Life
"This is writing of uncommon assurance and skill." - Jeet Thayil, author of Narcopolis
"It is with pleasure that I look forward to seeing Ranbir's debut published and having a chance to read it properly." - Edward Albee, author of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Zoo Story, and The Goat; three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and four-time Tony Award winner
This information about Good Indian Girls 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.
Ranbir Singh Sidhu was born in London and studied archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. His debut story collection,Good Indian Girls, will be published by Soft Skull Press in October. He is a winner of the Pushcart Prize in Fiction and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and other awards. His plays include True East..., Conquistadors, and Sangeet. Learn more at www.ranbirsidhu.com.
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