Sonora Jha with Debra Magpie Earling
The Laughter Saturday, June 8th at 6:00pm Join Sonora Jha (The Laughter and How to Raise a Feminist Son) and Debra Magpie Earling (The Lost Journals of Sacajewea and Perma Red) in celebration of the paperback release of Jha's latest novel, The Laughter. About The LaughterA white male college professor develops a dangerous obsession with his new Pakistani colleague in this modern, iconoclastic novel.
Dr. Oliver Harding, a tenured professor of English, is long settled into the routines of a divorced, aging academic. But his quiet, staid life is upended by his new colleague, Ruhaba Khan, a dynamic Pakistani Muslim law professor. Ruhaba unexpectedly ignites Oliver’s long-dormant passions, a secret desire that quickly tips towards obsession after her teenaged nephew, Adil Alam, arrives from France to stay with her. Drawn to them, Oliver tries to reconcile his discomfort with the worlds from which they come, and to quiet his sense of dismay at the encroaching change they represent—both in background and in Ruhaba’s spirited engagement with the student movements on campus. After protests break out demanding diversity across the university, Oliver finds himself and his beliefs under fire, even as his past reveals a picture more complicated than it seems. As Ruhaba seems attainable yet not, and as the women of his past taunt his memory, Oliver reacts in ways shocking and devastating. An explosive, tense, and illuminating work of fiction, The Laughter is a fascinating portrait of privilege, radicalization, class, and modern academia that forces us to confront the assumptions we make, as both readers and as citizens. Praise for The Laughter"Sonora Jha expertly inhabits the perspective of a man so terrified of the old world slipping away, he can’t see the ground shifting beneath his feet. A deliciously sharp, mercilessly perceptive exploration of power, The Laughter explores how ‘otherness’ is both fetishized and demonized, and what it means to love something—a person, a country—that does not love you back." - Celeste Ng, New York Times-bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts
'To say The Laughter is just a campus novel is to vastly undersell it; it’s also the story of America’s changing cultural landscape and the major political and philosophical shifts needed to uplift and protect the marginalized. This is a smart and hilarious book not just for anyone who wants to laugh at the absurdity of academia, but for anyone who wants to become a better person by doing it.' - New York Times Book Review “Jha impressively avoids the trap of preachiness and moralizing that stories of identity politics on campus tend to fall into; rather, hers is a subtle and nuanced look at the subject. The novel plants seeds that turn out to be red herrings, building layer upon layer of assumptions—about campus culture, identity politics, religion, East versus West, racism, and terrorism. . . . A powerful and darkly funny campus novel with an unexpected narrative perspective.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) About the authorsSonora Jha is the author of three books, most recently the novel The Laughter (2023), which was named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker and NPR, amongst others. It was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and won the AutHer Award for Best Fiction. Her memoir, How to Raise a Feminist Son (2021) has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and German. Her debut novel, Foreign (2013) was a finalist for the Shakti Bhatt Prize and the Hindu Prize and was long listed for the DSC Prize. After a career in journalism in India and Singapore, Dr. Jha is now a professor of journalism and an associate dean at Seattle University.
Debra Magpie Earling is the author of the novels Perma Red and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea. She is the recipient of the Montana Governor’s Arts Award and has received both a Guggenheim and NEA fellowship. Other awards include the American Book Award, the Mountains and Plains Bookseller Association Award, the Spur Award, and recently the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and Montana Book Award. Her novel Perma Red was recognized by the Atlantic Monthly as one of the Great American Novels of the past one hundred years. She retired from the University of Montana where she was named professor emeritus in 2021. She is a member and citizen of the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes. She is Bitterroot Salish. |
Book Launch
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