Western New York, 1985: Twelve-year-old Kiran Shah stands longingly outside the window of the Bell household, secretly observing the movements of the prototypically American family. He attends school with Kelly Bell, but he's powerfully drawn, in a way he does not yet quite understand, to her charismatic father, Chris.

Kiran is the American-born son of Indian immigrants struggling to adjust to life in a new world. His father, Dr. Nishit Shah, is a successful doctor haunted by the brother he left behind in India. His mother, Shanti, tries to settle into the life that was chosen for her-Nishit and Shanti's was an arranged marriage-even as she develops romantic feelings for handsome local Chris Bell. And Kiran is close to his beloved older sister, Preeti-until one summer afternoon, when an unexpected threat and an unfathomable betrayal drive a wedge between the two, with repercussions that stretch far into their futures.

As Kiran grows and enters young adulthood, he finds himself perpetually on the outside-not just as an Indian-American torn between two cultures, but as a gay man in a time and place where homosexuality is not tolerated. In the wake of an emotional breakdown, Kiran travels to India, where he forms an intense bond with a teenage hijra, a member of India's ancient transgender community. With her help, Kiran will attempt to pull together the pieces of his broken past.

With a large cast of complex characters and a narrative that shifts between rural America and small-town India, NO OTHER WORLD is a haunting meditation on our responsibilities to our families and to ourselves, the difficult choices we make and the people we hurt in our efforts to claim the lives that belong to us.

About the Author
Rahul Mehta's debut short story collection, Quarantine, won a Lambda Literary Award and the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction. His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Sun, New Stories from the South, the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, Marie Claire India, and other publications. An Out magazine "Out 100" honoree, he lives in Philadelphia with his partner and their dog, and teaches creative writing at the University of the Arts.

Reviews
"Like Tom Perrotta, Mehta digs into suburban angst and household secrets with insight and humor.... A family saga for the 21st century, No Other World journeys into daunting horizons to discover the familiar." - Shelf Awareness "No Other World is deeply satisfying, a novel so moving that I worried about its main characters for weeks after I finished reading it. Rahul Mehta is a writer with astonishing emotional subtlety and generosity; I loved this beautiful book." - Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies "What a compelling, magical, big-hearted, lyrical book. Rahul Mehta is an expansive and mesmerizing talent-he sees things generously, from all angles, and makes the reader care, and feel, deeply." - George Saunders, author of Tenth of December "No Other World is a tough and touching master class on being. Kiran's life is a remarkable catalogue of the many brands of love, some painful, some nourishing, all of them necessary." - Brian Leung, author of Take Me Home "No Other World is a profound and engrossing family saga about the immigrant experience. Mehta is a confident, empathic storyteller, his rendering of brutal scenes of pain, lust and love on two continents is fearless but forgiving, and this is just his debut novel. I impatiently await his next." - Bharati Mukherjee, author of Jasmine "Mehta uses vivid, memorable imagery to present likable, complex characters...and shimmering descriptions of emotionally resonant moments." - Booklist (starred review) "The power of No Other World is how inextricably bound to this world Mehta's characters are, and yet how untethered and restless they inevitably feel...I want to catch all of Mehta's precious metaphors and store them in my palms... Mehta's artfulness is the deep empathy with which we nevertheless regard his characters, forced to live in small worlds they're not fit for, worlds that cannot contain their complexities." - Lambda Book Report



Book Information
ISBN 9780062020475
Author Rahul Mehta
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint HarperPerennial
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Weight(grams) 270g