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For fans of Shuggie Bain and A Burning, a queer coming-of-age novel set in 1990s India, about a young man who joins a traveling street theater troupe, seeking to outrun the dark secrets of his past
Shagun knows he will never be the kind of son his father demands. After the sudden deaths of his beloved twin sisters, Shagun flees his own guilt, his mother's grief, and his father's violent disapproval by enrolling at an all-boys boarding school. But he doesn't find true belonging until he encounters a traveling theater troupe performing the Hindu myths of his childhood.
Welcomed by the other storytellers, Shagun thrives, easily embodying mortals and gods, men and women, and living on the road, where his father can't catch him. When Shagun meets Marc, a charming photographer, he seems to have found the love he always longed for, too. But not even Marc can save him from his lingering shame, nor his father's ever-present threat to send him to a conversion center. As Shagun's past begins to engulf him once again, he must decide if he is strong enough to face what he fears most, and to boldly claim his own happiness.
Utterly immersive and spellbinding, The Sea Elephants is both dark and beautiful, harrowing and triumphant. An ode to the redemptive joys of art, Shastri Akella's debut novel is a celebration of hard-won love—of others and for ourselves.
"Tantalizing…Akella's relaxed pacing and deep dives into his characters' inner lives allow for nuance and surprises. This is one to savor."
―Publishers Weekly
"[A] poised, elegant debut…A story about queer desire, the comfortable lies families tell themselves to survive, and art's power…While there is a rich, stories tradition of queerness in South Asian art, culture, and mythology, queer literature is still a relatively sparse canon. This makes Akella's novel, and his voice, all the more important."
―Poets & Writers
"A captivating coming-of-age tale."
―Electric Literature
"This queer coming-of-age novel is tender and thought-provoking. Set in India during the 1990s, Akella shines in his ability to craft characters filled with heart that come to life with gorgeous prose."
―Debutiful
"By turns tender and brutal, The Sea Elephants navigates the tumultuous waters of grief, guilt, and love with grace and precision. Akella has written an exquisite novel destined to be a classic."
―Eric Nguyen, author of Things We Lost to the Water
"Akella's debut novel is a compelling, beautifully assured and intense coming-of-age story about the wounding ferocity and terrible innocence of desire, and the resilience and hard-won wisdom by which love comes to know itself."
―Colin Barrett, author of Young Skins
This information about The Sea Elephants was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Shastri Akella holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His writing has appeared in Guernica, The Master's Review, Electric Literature, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, PANK, The Common, and World Literature Review, among others. The Sea Elephants is his debut novel.
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