Rakesh Satyal
Author of No One Can Pronounce My Name
About the Author
Image credit: Reading aloud at the Brooklyn Book Festival 2009, photo by Lampbane
Works by Rakesh Satyal
Associated Works
The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to their Younger Selves (2012) — Contributor — 266 copies, 5 reviews
Eat Joy: Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers (2019) — Contributor — 67 copies, 3 reviews
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- Gender
- male
- Agent
- Maria Massie
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Statistics
- Works
- 2
- Also by
- 4
- Members
- 490
- Popularity
- #50,416
- Rating
- 3.5
- Reviews
- 22
- ISBNs
- 23
There’s a lot of nice observation of the social structure of immigrant communities, with some delightfully cringe-making Indian parties, and Satyal also has a lot of fun at the expense of the Creative Writing industry, with a splendidly comic grand finale at a writers’ conference where the keynote speaker is a bigshot writer of novels about Indians in America (she’s recently moved to Lisbon and is about to publish her first book in Portuguese: Satyal can’t possibly be making fun of any real celebrity here, can he…?).
I was a little bit disappointed to find that there was nothing specific about the Cleveland setting: it’s all very generic suburbia, apart from the names of a real university and a few fictional shops and bars. Even when a character lands at Hopkins, he doesn’t feel compelled to notice its quaint period charm. The book is presumably set in Cleveland merely because Satyal grew up at the other end of Ohio and doesn’t want to embarrass his own family and friends.
In the end it’s a rather conventional American novel (Satyal is a publisher in his day-job), where the characters achieve fulfilment largely through becoming more integrated into America and (eventually) going to bed with the correct person, but there are quite a few enjoyably bizarre touches along the way.… (more)