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Synopses & Reviews
A young academic moves from India to the United States, where she navigates first love, a green card marriage, single motherhood, and more in this " delightful novel, written with immediacy, warmth, and wry humor " (Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author of Waiting).
Vega Gopalan is adrift. Still reeling from the death of her sister years earlier, she leaves South India to attend graduate school at Columbia University. In New York, Vega straddles many different worlds, eventually moving in and out of a series of relationships that take her through the striving world of academia, the intellectual isolation of the immigrant suburbs, and, ultimately, the loneliness of single motherhood. But it is the birth of Vega's daughter that forces the novel's central question: What does it mean to make a home?
Written with dry humor and searing insight, Habitations is an intimate story of identity, immigration, expectation and desire, and of love lost and found. But it is also a universal story of womanhood, and the ways in which women are forced to navigate multiple loyalties: to family, to community, and to themselves.
A profound meditation on the many meanings of home and on the ways love and kinship can be found, even in the most unfamiliar of places, Habitations introduces Sheila Sundar as an electrifying new voice in literary fiction.
Review
"A striking reflection on migration, family, loss and home, and a vital portrait of race in American academia. Through sharp, up-close narration, we share Vega Gopalan's piercing observations about the world that surrounds her, and the friends, loves, and city-dwelling strangers that come to shape her life as she tries to find her place in it. " Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, author of Big Girl
Review
"Sundar debuts with an earnest meditation on an Indian American graduate student's grief, loneliness, and longing... a fresh perspective on the pressures of motherhood and desire for self-fulfillment... This leaves readers with much to chew on." Publisher's Weekly
Review
"Sundar's debut novel is a wondrous mix of quiet heartache and unexpected hope, making it the best kind of literary fiction....The crisp plot and uncluttered writing make Habitations a remarkable first novel." Booklist
About the Author
Sheila Sundar is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Mississippi. Her writing has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and their three children. Habitations /is her debut novel.