“Dark Star is a remarkable book. It is among the best I have read for a long time.”
Ranjana Sengupta, The Hindu
“Sidhu’s short and profound book shows how far English can be taken. It is a woman’s book written by a man, a mother’s by a son. For Indian writing in English, it is a huge leap.”
Rajesh Sharma, The Tribune
“Sidhu composes the rhythm and tenor of the narrator’s voice so masterfully that reading the book reminds me of the times I lay by my grandmother in bed, listening to her recite stories that grew more repetitive and circular as she fell into a drowsy daze… Everything co-exists in the folds of this novella, not in the way that a book must talk about everything all at once but in how the smallest aspects of our lives find their way to the biggest issues that plague our countries and the world at large.”
Sakshi Agarwal, Scroll
“Dark Star is an important intervention that opens up new terrains for understanding the nature of intergenerational memory, mourning, and transformation in the wake of historical trauma.”
Amandeep Caur, The Book Review
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THE HINDU: “AMONG THE BEST BOOKS I HAVE READ FOR A LONG TIME”
INDIAN EXPRESS: “A MEDITATIVE EXPLORATION OF MISOGYNY AND NATIONALISM”
SCROLL: MEMORY AS “AN ACT OF POWER AND COURAGE”
DARK STAR NAMED A DELHIWIRE BOOK OF THE YEAR
DARK STAR “EDITOR’S PICK” AT WRITERSMELON
TRIBUNE: “FOR INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH, A HUGE LEAP”
THE BOOK REVIEW: “POWERFUL RENDITION OF ACT OF REMEMBERING”
DESI BOOKS: “GIVES VOICE TO THE SILENCED”
FINANCIAL EXPRESS: “EMPATHETIC AND POIGNANT“
KR MEERA & RANBIR SIDHU ON PATRIARCHY AND FEMINISM
Dark Star is a powerful meditation on the importance of remembering. This isn’t just a novel: it is itself a memory, the kind that comes to you from a smell, a sight, a fleeting feeling in the quiet mornings before the world has impressed upon you the constraints we have impressed upon the world. Ranbir Sidhu has a voice that is solely unique, and the prose that carries this story is pure delight. Dark Star is unforgettable.
Morgan Talty, Author of Night of the Living Rez
In Dark Star Ranbir Sidhu not only contemplates the life of a shuttered, oppressed but wildly imaginative woman, he becomes her, and thus the reader does, too. He conveys the inner life of a woman never allowed to be free, but finding freedom within her own mind. A beautiful novel of transformation and heart-rending compassion.
Helen Benedict, Author of Wolf Season and Map of Hope and Sorrow
This is a devastating and gorgeously written book—simultaneously a deft character study and a powerful prose meditation on family, gender, migration, politics, aging, and loss. Dark Star will linger long in the reader’s memory. An indelible book.
Lydia Kiesling, Author of The Golden State
A tour de force. In Ranbir Sidhu’s Dark Star an elderly woman in India journeys alone toward death. Her hypnotic soliloquy is a devastating indictment of the horrors of misogyny and the nightmare of nationalism; it’s also a meditation on time, memory, and the cosmos. In Sidhu’s deft hands, the microcosm of one woman’s suffering reveals the macrocosm of the fascist hellscape the planet now confronts. Dark Star is reminiscent of Jean Rhys and Elena Ferrante at her best (with Thomas Bernhard thrown in). I could not put it down.
Ru Marshall, Author of A Separate Reality
ABOUT RANBIR
Ranbir Sidhu’s new novel Night In Delhi will be released in 2024. His books include Dark Star (2022) Deep Singh Blue (2016), Good Indian Girls (2012), Object Lessons (in 12 Sides w/Afterglow) (2016), Hacking Trump A Writer Remembers (2018), and a chapbook The Fabulary (1997). He is a winner of the Pushcart Prize and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, among other awards.
His work appears in Conjuctions, The Georgia Review, Fence, Zyzzyva, The Missouri Review, Other Voices, The Happy Hypocrite, The Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Vice, The Wire, The Towner, Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, Terrain, and The Nation. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Village Voice and Gawker.
His essay, “The Indian Wedding that Exploded in Violence,” was selected as one of the Notable Essays in Best American Essays 2016, edited by Jonathan Franzen. His novel Dark Star was a shortlist finalist for the 2021 Dzanc Prize for Fiction. He is the author of several full-length plays, including True East…, Sangeet, and Conquistadors, and has been awarded residencies by the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Villa Montalvo.
RANBIR SIDHU 