A Life of Adventure and Delight - Softcover

Akhil Sharma was born in Delhi in India and emigrated to the USA in 1979. His stories have been published in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, and included in The Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Collections. His first book, An Obedient Father, won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. He was named one of Granta's 'Best of Young American Novelists' in 2007. His second novel, Family Life, won the 2015 Folio Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award 2016. Sharma is currently a Fellow at The New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

“[H]aunting, revelatory stories. . . . Sharma is boldly forthright and probing. Focusing exclusively on Indian characters, both in Delhi and in the New York metropolitan area, he brings a keen cultural awareness to each of these stories. . . . perceptive, humane, and pointed.”
- New York Times Book Review

“Sharma's sentences are simple, but what they add up to is so curious and complex.”
- David Sedaris, Parade

“[E]ight divine stories about all-too-human relationships.”
- Elle

“If you love short story collections, this one’s for you. A Life of Adventure and Delight offers a window into the Indian experience both in America and abroad. Author Akhil Sharma’s characters aren’t perfect ― they wrestle with belonging, tradition, and temptation ― but they’re heartbreakingly real and relatable, even at their worst.”
- Hello Giggles

“Those seeking quiet moments of revelation will find them here.”
- Publishers Weekly

“These stories have a psychological acuity that redeems their dark worldview.”
- Kirkus

“The stories in Akhil Sharma’s A Life of Adventure and Delight sweep across the page like monsoons―filled with energy, chaos, surprise, and rapture, they ravish and transform the very nature of reading.”
- Adam Johnson, National Book Award–winning author of Fortune Smiles

“One reads Akhil Sharma’s stories as one might watch waves approach the shore on which one stands, understanding that something unseen and powerful is driving them. The waves and the stories are beautiful, deceptively simple, and potentially dangerous.”
- Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sympathizer

“Readers wade into these stories as though stepping into a calm river only to be caught by the undercurrent of the most devastating kind―the demand of everyday existence. Akhil Sharma’s words touch the deep experience that often remains wordless. He is truly the Chekhov of our time.”
- Yiyun Li, author of Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

“Akhil Sharma’s deceptively simple diction has a way of cutting straight to the human bone. The stories in A Life of Adventure and Delight are revelations, every one.”
- Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Empire Falls and Everybody’s Fool

“Akhil Sharma keeps getting better. A Life of Adventure and Delight puts him in the rarest company: Chekhov company. Trevor company. I can’t think of many others. These stories are as clear as truth.”
- Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and More Than It Hurts You