“Green Apple Books” Author Talk: Mira Sethi and Shruti Swamy

Submitted by the Event Organizer

In partnership with The Ruby SF

Join us on Thursday, April 29 at 6pm PT when Mira Sethi is joined by Shruti Swamy to discuss her debut short story collection, Are You Enjoying?, on Zoom!

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Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88167438648

Praise for Are You Enjoying?

“Fresh, intelligent, and bold: Mira Sethi’s stories open up fascinating slices of contemporary life in Pakistan.”—Mohsin Hamid, author of Exit West

“A powerful book with a light touch, marking the arrival of an assured storyteller…Sethi is operating in a rich tradition of South Asian storytelling, but also, with the distinct and vibrant perspective she offers, making it her own.”—Vogue

“Biting and incisive stories…especially striking for their portrayal of hidden homosexuality.”—Kirkus Reviews

About Are You Enjoying?

An exhilarating debut by a young writer from Pakistan: provocative, funny, disarmingly original stories that upend traditional notions of identity and family, and peer into the vulnerable workings of the human heart.

From the high-stakes worlds of television and politics to the intimate corridors of home—including the bedroom—these wryly observed, deeply revealing stories look at life in Pakistan with humor, compassion, psychological acuity, and emotional immediacy. Childhood best friends agree to marry in order to keep their sexuality a secret. A young woman with an anxiety disorder discovers the numbing pleasures of an illicit love affair. A radicalized student’s preparations for his sister’s wedding involve beating up the groom. An actress is forced to grow up fast on the set of her first major tv show, where the real intrigue takes place off-screen. Every story bears witness to the all-too-universal desire to be loved, and what happens when this longing gets pushed to its limits. Are You Enjoying? is a free-spirited, confident, indelible introduction to a galvanizing new talent.

About Shruti Swamy’s A House is a Body

“Swamy’s A House Is a Body will not simply be talked about as one of the greatest short story collections of the 2020s; it will change the way all stories—short and long—are told, written, and consumed. There is nothing, no emotion, no tiny morsel of memory, no touch, that this book does not take seriously. Yet, A House Is a Body might be the most fun I’ve ever had in a short story collection.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

Dreams collide with reality, modernity with antiquity, and myth with identity in the twelve arresting stories of A House Is a Body. In “Earthly Pleasures,” a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of India’s biggest celebrities, and desire and ego are laid bare. In “A Simple Composition,” a husband’s professional crisis leads to his wife’s discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy. And in the title story, an exhausted mother watches, hypnotized by fear, as a California wildfire approaches her home. Immersive and assured, provocative and probing, these are stories written with the edge and precision of a knife blade. Set in the United States and India, they reveal small but intense moments of beauty, pain, and power that contain the world.

A House Is a Body introduces a bold and original voice in fiction, from a writer at the start of a stellar career.

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