Your debut novel, Secret Daughter, was inspired by your time volunteering at an Indian orphanage, while your new novel, A Great Country, was influenced by your college internship shadowing the Minneapolis Police Department. Did these experiences spark the ideas for your novels?
“At the time of both of these experiences, I was a university student. The internships took me well out of my comfort zone and offered a profoundly different world view than I had had up to that point. While I had been to India many times and much of my family lived there, I hadn’t known the slice of society I saw at the Child Haven orphanage in Hyderabad. These were parents who surrendered their children because they couldn’t care for them, kids who were happy despite having no possessions, women who had left abusive homes to care for others’ children. It was a beautiful family, in a very real sense of the word.
“Similarly, the summer I spent riding along in patrol cars with the Minneapolis Police Department opened my eyes to a side of life I’d never seen. Walking through a crack house, having conversations with sex workers, being called to domestic violence incidents—all of this changed my outlook on the world. At that point in my life, I’d never contemplated writing fiction, but when I finally did, two decades later, I drew on those deeply affecting experiences, which stayed with me and complicated the way I think about issues.”
Ajay’s interaction with the police is reminiscent of many of the stories we hear about through the media outlets. Why did you want to include this experience?
“I intentionally crafted this pivotal event to be less violent than a shooting or death, the type of incidents we usually see in the news. I didn’t want the entire story to be overwhelmed by an act of extreme violence or preoccupied by the internal investigations that ensue after an officer-involved shooting. I also wanted the incident to be more ambiguous in terms of fault and cause. These smaller, subtler incidents occur far more often and form much of the fabric between the police and the community.”
Your work deals with the immigrant experience. In A Great Country, you’ve layered in the nuances of privilege and affluence. What inspired you to set the novel in the gated community of Pacific Hills?
“Pacific Hills represents the holy grail of the North American dream. Parents are drawn to the idea of achieving a better life for their children, often defined as a comfortable home, a nice neighbourhood, and a good school district. Immigrants such as Ashok, who comes from a place without much upward mobility, are particularly inspired by this goal. He idealizes America as a pure meritocracy where he can prove himself, “a great country” as his father calls it. Priya also invests great faith in playing by the rules and working hard. When the Shahs finally reach the promised land of Pacific Hills, the move brings with it the expectation that certain kinds of problems are behind them. But really, it gives them a view into a new strata of society with its own set of rules.”
A Great Country has been likened to works by Celeste Ng, Brit Bennett, and Kiley Reid. Did any novel help guide or inspire A Great Country? Do you have any book recommendations?
“I chose to anchor my previous novels in the recent past, in part to avoid writing about modern conveniences like mobile phones or about significant current events that might overwhelm the story I wanted to tell. In the last few years, I found myself appreciating books that adeptly wove current social issues into a great story, like Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng), Leave the World Behind (Rumaan Alam), and We Are Not Like Them (Christine Pride and Jo Piazza). They felt fresh and relevant. My enduring novel recommendations are A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry) and Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese), and for short stories, Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri).”
What do you hope readers take away from A Great Country?
“One of the reasons I believe fiction is so powerful is that it allows us to step into another person’s shoes and mindset for a moment, to see how decisions that seem irrational to us might make perfect sense for someone else. Much of our perspective is naturally informed by our own life experience. But in the pages of a great story, the reader can also dare to stretch a little. I hope that readers can give some consideration to the perspectives with which they don’t easily agree. None of us are without flaws and we all make mistakes, but many people have good intentions. If we can better understand other sides, perhaps we can find some common ground and root our solutions there.”
