DARK STAR

“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

DEEP SINGH BLUE

“This is no picturesque coming of age. In an immigrant family and an adopted land both straitjacketed by denial and rage, it’s an open question—and a propulsive one—whether Deep Singh’s lashings out to save himself will lead to salvation or destruction. Deep Singh Blue is work of ferocious bravery, intelligence, and art.”

Alex Shakar, author of Luminarium

“Sidhu writes with keen wit and crafts every character with psychological texture, exploring the effects of racism as well as the desire to control a world spinning off its axis… A heart-wrenching coming-of-age tale in which survival depends more on compassion than rebellion.”

Kirkus Reviews

“Ranbir Singh Sidhu’s debut novel Deep Singh Blue tells the story of an Indian family that’s trying to gain a foothold in their adopted United States, a journey marked by tragedy and bad decisions. [An] ambitious stab at a truly challenging art form. No shortcuts here, just good solid writing about flawed humans and the messes they get into.”

KQED

“I don’t know which virtue of Deep Singh Blue to recommend: the love-hate letter to northern California; the rich portraiture of Deep Singh, his family, and his tempestuous girlfriend; the oh-no-did-he-just-do-that storytelling; or indeed the blue that informs the restless, cutting, tender intelligence of the book. Enjoy them all, weeping and laughing and gasping.”

Matthew Sharpe, author of Jamestown and The Sleeping Father

“How can such a messed-up world be perfect? That paradox animates Deep Singh Blue and provides its most painful ironies… With its coming-of-age family culture clash, Deep Singh Blue veers closer to the territory of “immigrant fiction” and its well-known tropes of middle-class assimilation. But, it becomes clear, the purpose in coming close has been to take a strafing pass at those conventions and to punch through to something altogether larger.”

Heather Mackey, Your Impossible Voice

“A haunting story about dislocation and its effect on children and women, Deep Singh Blue exposes the brutal side of life in suburban America. A counter narrative—the uprising of the Sikhs in the Indian Punjab and the massacre by the Indian Army of Sikh fighters—mirrors the struggle and survival of Deep’s family in suburban California. A master story-teller, Sidhu has weaved an original and refreshing multi-layered narrative.”

Moazzam Sheikh, author of Cafe le Whore

Deep Singh wants out — out of his family, out of his city, and more than anything, out of his life. His parents argue over everything, his dad passes his evenings shouting at the television, and his brother, who hasn’t said a single word in over a year, suddenly turns to him one day and tells him to die.

So when Lily, a beautiful, older, and married, woman, shows him more than a flicker of attention, he falls heedlessly in love. It doesn’t help that Lily is an alcoholic, hates her husband, and doesn’t think much of herself, or her immigrant Chinese mom either. As Deep’s growing obsession with Lily begins to spin out of control, the rest of his life mirrors his desperation — culminating in his brother’s disappearance and an unfolding tragedy.

Ranbir Singh Sidhu’s debut takes us into the heart of another America, and into the lives of “the other Indians — the ones who don’t get talked about and whose stories don’t get written.” With a sharp, funny and unsentimental eye, Sidhu chronicles the devastating consequences of racism in eighties’ America and offers a portrait of a wildly dysfunctional family trying its best, and failing miserably, to gain a handhold in their adopted country.

 

“Ranbir Singh Sidhu’s Deep Singh Blue is a brutal and darkly comic story of a young man’s journey into adulthood. This is that rare bird: a genuinely moving tale of love, loss and madness—and of a family that however hard it tries, can’t possibly hold itself together. An extraordinary novel, and a thrilling ride into the future of American letters.”

Jakob Holder, author of Housebreaking and Bedtime Solos

“The Indian American narrator of Ranbir Singh Sidhu’s breathtaking debut, Deep Singh Blue, is troubled, unlikable, and out of control. In flawless, terse prose, Sidhu gives us the tale of a suffocating and often unhinged family, and leads us to the kind of authentic sympathy that only tragedy provides.”

Titi Nguyen, essayist, The New York Times, The Threepenny Review and Ninth Letter

GOOD INDIAN GIRLS

“Achingly merciless, London-born author Sidhu’s 12 short stories sharply delineate the edges of identity and sanity… These haunting tales simultaneously attract and repel, enchant and shatter, evoking the ambiguous relationships between past and present, others and self… Deftly sifting through a range of less-often-visited emotions, Sidhu creates inscrutable characters inhabiting bewildering circumstances… Smart, provocative and poignantly disturbing, this collection, the author’s U.S. debut, signals a writer to watch.”

Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

In twelve startling and vividly imagined stories, Ranbir Singh Sidhu overturns the lives of ordinary Indians living in America to bring us a bold debut collection, Good Indian Girls.

A woman attends a de-cluttering class in search of love. A low-level, drunkard diplomat finds himself mysteriously transferred to the Consulate in San Francisco, where everyone believes he is a great, lost poet. An anthropological expedition searching for early human fossils goes disastrously wrong and the leader turns to searching for the very first sounds made by humans. The wife of a retiring Consul pays tribute to her pet python by preparing to serve him to her dinner guests. The discovery of a skull outside an orphanage leads to the creation of a cult around one of the charismatic young residents. Unsettling, moving, insightful, humorous — these beautifully written stories travel between despair and redemption as they illuminate the lives of often deeply flawed characters. This collection marks the emergence of a major new voice in American fiction. “In twelve vivid stories, Ranbir Singh Sidhu paints tender, uproarious and incredibly insightful portraits of Indians living in America.” Barnes & Noble Review “Though weird and eccentric, Sidhu’s stories are also empathetic and refreshingly free of the clichés of immigrant narratives. He manages to portray his characters as uniquely Indian without losing sight of their individuality, offering small, piercing looks into the humanity that resides in every situation and person, no matter how strange.” Publishers Weekly “With adeptly drawn characters, Sidhu demonstrates a dexterous grasp of the human psyche, while the prevalence of dark twists displays his love of the fatalistic. This propensity for the morose will be off-putting for some but is sure to please those with a taste for black humor and shades of the diabolical.” Booklist “Ranbir Sidhu is imaginative, with a dry, sly wit, very intelligent, and owns a wicked sensibility, all of which makes his fiction smart, daring, sensitive to human perversity, and keen in its observations. He is one of the most compelling and sophisticated younger writers today; and his writing is beautiful and entertaining.” Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius A Comedy, and No Lease On Life “When I first met Ranbir Sidhu, he was a resident at the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk and while there, he displayed tremendous talent and dedication. His work takes risks, is often daring and imaginative, and I appreciate the intelligence he brings to his craft. I look forward to reading his new collection of stories, Good Indian Girls.” Edward Albee, author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? “Whenever I pick up a story by Ranbir Sidhu, I feel as though I’ve been released from the cedarwood closet of literature into the fresh air of active creation; as though I’d been fitted with brand-new high-tech earphones picking up an infinity of eloquent microphones cleverly scattered around the world. The pops and squeaks of new life crackle in my ears, and even when they’re threatening or saddening, I’m inevitably overcome by the hope that they’ll never stop.” Harry Mathews, author of My Life in CIA, Cigarettes and The Journalist “The first-person narrator of ‘The Good Poet of Africa’ despises poetry, repays compassion with insult, and enjoys lying to children. but, by story’s end, the moral universe will be turned on its head, and the reader will empathize with Ranbir Sidhu’s loathsome protagonist. This is writing of uncommon assurance and skill.” Jeet Thayil, author of Narcopolis “Ranbir Sidhu’s HACKING TRUMP is a manifesto of tears and rage written by the truest sort of American. That’s the American who’s a citizen not by birth but by dream, his patriotism measured by the fissure of a broken heart, in this moment when a nation that’s commanded the imagination of the world for two centuries intently betrays itself.” -Steve Erickson, author of Arc d’X and Shadowbahn

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Was there really ever a time before Trump? A time before Steve, Kellyanne, Jared and Ivanka? It feels impossible to imagine now. He’s been president for a year, but to those who never normalized the daily insults against common sense and democracy from the White House, it seems like it’s been a decade of nonstop outrage, buffoonery and that kind of straight-up Trumptini—shaken and stirred—that only The Donald can deliver. As we push against our own victimization, we need to push against collective amnesia, and hack the Trump story rather than be blinded by its cat video distractions. Hacking Trump is a portrait of the forces and personalities that shaped the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency. It is also an act of memory against forgetting, and a personal remembrance, with a novelist’s perspective. Cutting through the hazy, unstable ether of recent history and searching for the roots of the GOP’s tax cut-or-die dysfunction and its obsession with a reality star president, Hacking Trump does what only good literature can do—decipher the past to uncover a deeper truth about our future.

OBJECT LESSONS

(in 12 Sides w/Afterglow)

a novella

from Run/Off Editions

(available from Amazon) Gorgeously designed by Marion Bizet.