Jaipal feels like the unnoticed, unremarkable sibling, always left to fend for himself. He is stuck working in the family store, avoiding their father’s wrath, with nothing but his hidden desires to distract him. Desperate for money and connection, he seizes a sudden opportunity to take his life into his own hands for the first time. But his decision leaves him at the mercy of an increasingly volatile country. On a small Pacific island, a brother and sister tune in to a breaking news radio bulletin. It is 1985, and an Indian grocer has just been attacked by nativists aligned with the recent military coup. Now, fear and shock are rippling through the island’s deeply-rooted Indian community as racial tensions rise to the brink. Spanning from the lush terrain of the South Pacific to the golden hills of San Francisco, Mother Ocean Father Nation is an entrancing debut about how one family, at the mercy of a nation broken by legacies of power and oppression, forges a path to find a home once again. Bhumi hears this news from her locked-down dorm room in the capital city. She is the ambitious, intellectual standout of the family—the one destined for success. But when her friendship with the daughter of a prominent government official becomes a liability, she must flee her unstable home for California. A riveting, tender debut novel, following a brother and sister whose paths diverge—one forced to leave, one left behind—in the wake of a nationalist coup in the South Pacific
Jaipal and Bhumi are estranged siblings. The first is a young gay man working as a bartender, the second a brilliant biology student, both of them living on a small West Pacific island. When the dictator starts discriminating against « Indians » more and more, they’re worried – when discrimination turns into plain government harassment, it’s too late to leave. Jaipal tries to survive, while Bhumi, their mother’s favourite, finds out she has a passport ready and is eligible for refugee status in the United States. Their two destinies keep getting further, as both of them try to build a world and a life wherever they are.
A compelling and horrifying read.
As a teenager, I was obsessed with dystopias, and was extremely sad when the genre finally came to pass. Now that I’m all grown up, I read contemporary novels and see the dystopia in them.
This one is an easy one, but the fact that it’s based on real slices of history horrifies me – and even more so the fact that I had no idea.
Happy new year! After talking about my low-stakes accomplishments and the non-book media I consumed in 2023, it’s time to share my reading retrospective. It’s…