South Haven: A Novel

(Paperback)

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Description

Grief, violence and history collide to offer a radical look at childhood and migration in suburban New England. Siddharth Arora lives an ordinary life in the New England suburb of South Haven, but his childhood comes to a grinding halt when his mother dies in a car accident. Siddharth soon gravitates towards a group of adolescent bullies, drinking and smoking instead of drawing and swimming. He also takes great pains to care for his depressive father. Sawhney blurs line between victim and victimizer and asking readers to contend with the lies we tell ourselves.

Reviews

Sawhney's portrait of childhood grief is complex and explosive, and it challenges the definition of victim.
--Minnesota Public Radio

Readers will come to love South Haven's Siddharth and to care for this motherless boy in an immigrant family . . . Sawhney's writes in lucid prose about a cast of flawed characters . . . Despite the contentious behavior there is an underlying tenderness to the family dynamic. This lends South Haven a density that makes it more than a simple coming-of-age novel.
--Jaggery Lit

This book became insight into what the life of a South Asian family is like in suburbia here in the US. But it remained a sharp, sensitive comment on adolescence and how much we still struggle to do well by our youth. Sawhney leaves us with a good cliffhanger in the end which I admired. He didn't have to tell us how each character turned out in life but lets us imagine their further existence.
--WORD Bookstores, Staff pick

Included in John Reed's list of Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2016 at Big Other

This story was absolutely beautifully written. I found myself unable to stop turning page after page as I immersed myself in this book fully. It is a gripping story from start to finish, as you read hoping that this family will finally come to terms with their loss. A definite 10 stars out of 5 star read.
--The Reading Wolf

A son of Hindu immigrants from India grows up in a New England suburb, where he struggles to find his way after his mother dies, while his father becomes immersed in anti-Muslim fundamentalism.
--World Wide Work

A novelist you will be reading for years to come.
--Amy Bloom, author of Lucky Us

South Haven is an affecting tale of a family's loss, a child's grief, and the search for solace in all the wrong places. Hirsh Sawhney is an incandescent voice in fiction.
--Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account

It's no secret that grief makes us vulnerable, but Hirsh Sawhney's perceptively rendered South Haven presents a volatile mix of second-generation migration, sadness, and cruelty in suburban America. South Haven is bold, accessible, funny, and heartbreaking.
--Jayne Anne Phillips, author of Quiet Dell

Hirsh Sawhney writes with wit and tenderness about a harsh childhood. And such is his power of insight that this novel, set in a New England suburb, manages to illuminate a larger landscape of cruelty and torment.
--Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire

Hirsh Sawhney has produced an intelligent and beautiful novel. It is about America and India, fathers and children, families and loss. The world is changing and here is a new map of belonging.
--Nadeem Aslam, author of The Blind Man's Garden

A lyrical yet disturbing look at the grim realities of migration and American suburban life, South Haven manages to be both witty and unnerving at the same time. It is a novel that resonates long in the memory.
--Caryl Phillips, author of The Lost Child

Author Bio

Hirsh Sawhney's writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Financial Times, Outlook, and numerous other periodicals. He is the editor of Delhi Noir, a critically acclaimed anthology of original fiction, and is on the advisory board of Wasafiri, a London-based journal of international literature. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and teaches at Wesleyan University. South Haven is his debut novel.