In a book club? Please take our annual Book Club Survey

Summary and Reviews of Seeking Fortune Elsewhere by Sindya Bhanoo

Seeking Fortune Elsewhere by Sindya Bhanoo

Seeking Fortune Elsewhere

by Sindya Bhanoo
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • First Published:
  • Mar 8, 2022, 240 pages
  • Paperback:
  • May 2023, 240 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

These intimate stories of South Indian immigrants and the families they left behind center women's lives and ask how women both claim and surrender power - a stunning debut collection from an O. Henry Prize winner.

Traveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime symmetries in lives growing apart.

In "Malliga Homes," selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize, a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his graduate students.

Sindya Bhanoo's haunting stories show us how immigrants' paths, and the paths of those they leave behind, are never simple. Bhanoo takes us along on their complicated journeys where regret, hope, and triumph appear in disguise.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

The tightness and brevity of these tales allow for a cohesive flow and focus that remains across the entire reading experience. That focus is demonstrated by the book's unifying themes of distance and connection. The collection's first story — "Malliga Homes" — tells the tale of an elderly woman who has been housed in a retirement village by her daughter Kamala, who immigrated to the United States. The theme of connection runs deeper than the issue of geography, as is best seen in the story "Nature Exchange." In this story, Veena is a woman in her 30s who lost her only child — a boy of seven — to a school shooting. Connection is tested in a different way in the story "A Life in America," in which an Indian professor at a U.S. college finds himself under fire from local newspapers...continued

Full Review (633 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Will Heath).

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Fiction by Indian Diaspora Authors

Sindya Bhanoo, author of the story collection Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, writes about South Indian immigrant and diaspora communities and the connections people in them maintain (or lose) with family in India. Bhanoo, who lives in Texas, was born to immigrant parents in the United States. The Indian diaspora is the largest in the world and encompasses a wide range of cultures, languages and experiences. Below are a few additional works of fiction by Indian diaspora authors that cover all kinds of subjects and that have been reviewed and recommended on BookBrowse.

Covers of novels by Indian diaspora authors

Girls Burn Brighter (2018) — Shobha Rao emigrated from India to the United States at age seven. She published the short story collection An Unrestored Woman in ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, try these:

  • The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years jacket

    The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

    by Shubnum Khan

    Published 2025

    About this book

    "A dark and heady dream of a book" (Alix E. Harrow) about a ruined mansion by the sea, the djinn that haunts it, and a curious girl who unearths the tragedy that happened there a hundred years previous

  • A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times jacket

    A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times

    by Meron Hadero

    Published 2022

    About this book

    Winner of the 2020 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, Ethiopian American author Meron Hadero's gorgeously wrought stories in A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times offer poignant, compelling narratives of those whose lives have been marked by border crossings and the risk of ...

We have 8 read-alikes for Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    Wandering Stars
    by Tommy Orange
    Tommy Orange follows There There with a powerful multi-generational story of survival and legacy.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Three Days in June
    by Anne Tyler

    A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

  • Book Jacket

    Harlem Rhapsody
    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

Who Said...

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

D to T N

and be entered to win..