Author Reading w/ Shilpi Somaya Gowda

***PUBLICATION DAY IS MARCH 26, 2024. PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY HERE.

Reading and signing for A Great Country, Gowda’s new novel exploring themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream.

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple.

For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member’s perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?

For readers of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, A Great Country explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream.

Shilpi Somaya Gowda was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Her forthcoming novel A Great Country explores the ties and fractures of a close-knit Indian-American family in the aftermath of a violent encounter with the police. Her previous novels, Secret Daughter, The Golden Son, and The Shape of Family,  became international bestsellers, selling over two million copies worldwide, in over 30 languages. She holds degrees from Stanford University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain scholar. She lives in California with her husband and children.

Doors at 6:30pm | Free