Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Karan Mahajan was born in 1984 and grew up in New Delhi, India. His first novel, Family Planning, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize and published in nine countries. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NPR's All Things Considered, The New Yorker online, The Believer, The Paris Review Daily, and Bookforum.
Karan has worked as an editor in San Francisco, a consultant on economic and urban planning issues for the New York City government, and a researcher in Bangalore.
A graduate of Stanford University and the Michener Center for Writers, he lives in Austin, Texas.
Karan Mahajan's website
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Is the bombing at the beginning of the book based on a real event?
Yes. In 1996, Kashmiri separatists set off a bomb in Lajpat Nagar market in Delhi, about fifteen minutes from my home; the bomb killed thirteen and injured thirty. My grandmother had been there the day before to buy yarn, and my parents and I often went to the market to run errands: buying medicines, getting electronics repaired, purchasing school uniforms. It remains one of the few terrorist attacks in which I—or a family member—may have plausibly died.
The attack stayed local, though—it never became a major news event, and though Delhiites of a certain age remember it, it isn't part of the larger discussion of terrorism. This makes sense: before 9/11, India treated terror with the same overall indifference it applies to other tragedies: as yet another manifestation of a national malaise.
I should also stress that, though my novel takes the blast as a starting point, it deviates from fact.
Where did the idea for this novel begin?
It began in my unformed fury at the 26/11 Mumbai Attacks, which were broadcast on television for four days straight, like a mini-series of terror. I remember sitting in my office in New York—I worked then ...
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