Published in 2023
212 pages
Buku Sarkar is a writer and photographer whose work has appeared in various magazines and journals including The New York Review of Books, n+1, Raleigh Review, Threepenny Review, The New York Times, Huffington Post and Mint Lounge. Her photographs have been exhibited at International Center for Photography in New York; Art Basel, Miami; and venues across the United States and Europe; and she has featured in Fleur and Arbor magazine and The Photographers’ Gallery, London. She received the Andrew Nelson Lytle Award for best short story in 2021. Her photobook, Photowali Didi, was published in 2022. Buku lives in Kolkata and New York.
What is this book about?
In six connected, haunting vignettes that span two continents and two decades, we follow Anjali, misfit, the expensively educated daughter of a wealthy family, from her childhood in Calcutta to her coming of age in New York City, claiming the grimy dive bars of the East Village as her own. We also see her childhood friend Anita, who struggles with the quieter life, marriage and motherhood she has chosen, in a suburb of Ohio.
These are women who muster all their grit and resolve to make their way in the world, seeking their identity.
Not Quite a Disaster after All is a novel about how our expectations from life shift and change, how they can be pushed in the most unpredictable ways. It is about the thin line between self-destruction and survival. It is, equally, about falling in love-with a person, a city, or simply with the alluring, exciting promise of the new.
Deceptively simple in its telling, and gently ironic, a nuanced narrative of depth and power, it marks the arrival of an outstanding voice in fiction.
