A CALIFORNIA STORY

Ved, a 36-year-old Indian in Silicon Valley, works for Omnicon, the world’s largest computer networking company whose culture he finds both sad and comical. Its quietly brewing troubles will soon engulf him, even as he must deal with the turmoil in his relationships with Sasha, a Russian escort, and Liz, a spiritual-liberal American. Amid all this, his traditional parents visit him from India. On a weekend outing with them, a man mistakes him for an Arab and violently assaults him in a hate crime.

“Namit Arora writes with an enviable briskness and ease, and produces an engaging, incisive portrait of the Indian techie in Silicon Valley. A California Story describes immigrant life with empathy but without pulling any punches. Arora’s California is a space of innovation and discovery, but also challenge and alienation. Readers will be amused, saddened, angered and educated as they read this rigorously unsanitized version of the desi dream.” —Suvir Kaul, AM Rosenthal Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania.

Paperback: 222 pages
Publishing date: August 25 2019
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1-950437-83-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-950437-83-2
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.7 x 9 inches

Namit Arora is the author of The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social Inequalities (2017), published by Three Essays Collective. His essays have also appeared in venues like The Humanist, Philosophy Now, The Times Literary Supplement, The Caravan, The Kyoto Journal, The Philosopher, Himal Southasian, and four college anthologies in the US. He wrote a column on 3 Quarks Daily for many years. In 2011, he won the 3 Quarks Daily Arts & Literature Prize.