Book details

Other books

Other people who viewed this bought | Other books in this series
Showing items 1 to 10 of 10

 

Full description | Reviews | Bibliographic data

  • Full bibliographic data for One Amazing Thing

    Title
    One Amazing Thing
    Authors and contributors
    By (author) Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
    Physical properties
    Format: Hardback
    Number of pages: 220
    Width: 142 mm
    Height: 219 mm
    Thickness: 20 mm
    Weight: 390 g
    Audience
    General/trade
    Language
    English
    ISBN
    ISBN 13: 9781401340995
    ISBN 10: 1401340997
    Classifications
    Dewey: 813.54
    Nielsen BookScan Product Class: F1.1
    Dewey: FIC
    BICMainSubject: FA
    BISAC category code: FIC019000
    BISAC category code: FIC051000
    Dewey: 813/.54
    Edition
    1
    Publisher
    Voice
    Imprint name
    Voice
    Publication date
    02 February 2010
    Publication City/Country
    New York, NY/US
    Main description
    "Divakaruni is a brilliant storyteller; she illuminates the world with her artistry; and shakes the reader with her love." --Junot DiazLate afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of 9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair.When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There's little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, "one amazing thing" from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself. From Chitra Divakaruni, author of such finely wrought, bestselling novels as Sister of My Heart, The Palace of Illusions, and The Mistress of Spices, comes her most compelling and transporting story to date. One Amazing Thing is a passionate creation about survival--and about the reasons to survive.Praise for One Amazing Thing"The plot of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's new novel could be ripped from the horrifying headlines about Haiti in a strange case of art imitating life. ...One Amazing Thing, which was written well before the Haiti earthquake, is receiving high praise." --USA Today"The appeal of these life stories, like that of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is that they throw the spotlight onto varied lives, each with its own joys and miseries. Together, the stories show how easy it is to divert young lives into unforeseen and restrictive channels, and how hard it is for people to realize their early dreams. Their shared experiences and fears form the frame that holds together this compendium of short stories into an absorbing novel. ...At the end of her novel, her readers are fully engaged in what will happen to those nine people." --Washington Post"Hauntingly beautiful. ...One Amazing Thing is a page-turner with high drama, elegant writing, and lots of helpful tips for teamwork in a crisis." --Houston Chronicle"Her fiction is so intimate that it often seems as if cultural context is irrelevant. Her character's dreams and disappointments are paramount... The karmic energy of One Amazing Thing revolves around Divakaruni's gifts as a novelist." --Seattle Times"Masterful storyteller Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni examines such stories in an apropos novel for our times. Her suspenseful tale of nine souls who suddenly don't know if they will live or die is a tribute -- on many levels -- to hope and survival. But it is also, most successfully, a ringing rebuke to rushes to judgment. It's an adult, literary version of The Breakfast Club, with dire circumstances. 'Hell is other people,' Uma thinks as she looks at one of her fellow distraught victims. But redemption can be other people, too, Uma and the others soon understand. One more amazing thing we've learned from Divakaruni." --Miami Herald"Divakaruni portrays in beautiful prose, haunting characters, and a luminously and ominously developed plot, the universal and individual qual
    Biographical note
    Chitra Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling novelist and poet. She is the author of 14 books in all, including the short story collection The Unknown Errors of our Lives and the novels Sister of My Heart, The Mistress of Spices, Queen of Dreams, and The Palace of Illusions. Two of her novels have been made into movies. Her writings have appeared in more than 50 mgazines, including The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. She has also become a frequently sought-after op-ed and NPR commentator regarding how the West perceives Southeast Asia.