New York, NY: Norton (2014)

As new in paperback.

Ram Karan, a corrupt official in New Delhi, lives with his widowed daughter and his little granddaughter. Bumbling, sad, ironic, Ram is also a man corroded by a terrible secret. Taking the reader down into a world of feuding families and politics, An Obedient Father is a work of rare sensibilities that presents a character as formulated, funny, and morally ambiguous as any of Dostoevsky’s antiheroes.

Akhil Sharma is the author of Family Life, a New York Times Best Book of the Year and the winner of the International DUBLIN Literary Award and the Folio Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Award Stories. A native of Delhi, he lives in New York City and teaches English at Rutgers University–Newark.