"Leaping, chattering, dancing atop this conundrum [of global migration] comes the hero of Celina Baljeet Basras debut novel, Happy Singh Soni, his head bursting with ideas, his heart set on gargantuan dreams."
New York Times
★Publishers Weekly ★Bookpage ★Booklist
In a rural village of Punjab, India, a moony young man crouches over his phone in a rapeseed field near his familys cabbage farm. His name is Happy Singh Soni, and hes watching YouTube clips of his favorite film, Bande à Part by Jean-Luc Godard. In fact, Happy is often compared to a young Sami Frey by the imaginary journalists that keep him company while he uses the outhouse. Pooing, as he says, en plein air. When hes not sleeping among the cabbages and eating his mothers sugary rotis, Happy dreams of becoming an actor, one who plays the melancholy rolessad, pretty boys, rare in Indian cinema. There are macho leads and funny boys en masse, but if youre looking for depth and vulnerability, you must make your own heroes.
Then comes Wonderland, an eccentric facsimile of Disneyland that steadily buys up the local farms, rebranding the communitys traditional way of life. Happy works a dead-end job at the amusement park, biding his time and saving money for a clandestine journey to Europe, where hell finally land a breakout role. Little does he know that his immigration is being coordinated by a transnational crime syndicate. After a nightmarish passage to Italy, Happy still manages to find relief in food and fantasy, even as he is forced into ever-worsening work conditions over a debt he allegedly accrued in transit. But his daydreams grow increasingly at odds with his bleak reality, one shared by so many migrant workers disenfranchised by the systems that depend on their labor.
At turns funny and poetic, sunny and tragic, Happy is a daring feat of postmodern literature, a polyphonic novel about the urgent, lovely coping mechanisms created by generations of diasporic people. Set against the enmeshed crises of global migration and the politics of labor within the food industry, Celina Baljeet Basras luminous debut argues for the things that are essential to human survival: food, water, a place to lay ones head, but also pleasure, romance, art, and the inalienable right to a vivid inner life.
Genre: Literary Fiction
New York Times
★Publishers Weekly ★Bookpage ★Booklist
In a rural village of Punjab, India, a moony young man crouches over his phone in a rapeseed field near his familys cabbage farm. His name is Happy Singh Soni, and hes watching YouTube clips of his favorite film, Bande à Part by Jean-Luc Godard. In fact, Happy is often compared to a young Sami Frey by the imaginary journalists that keep him company while he uses the outhouse. Pooing, as he says, en plein air. When hes not sleeping among the cabbages and eating his mothers sugary rotis, Happy dreams of becoming an actor, one who plays the melancholy rolessad, pretty boys, rare in Indian cinema. There are macho leads and funny boys en masse, but if youre looking for depth and vulnerability, you must make your own heroes.
Then comes Wonderland, an eccentric facsimile of Disneyland that steadily buys up the local farms, rebranding the communitys traditional way of life. Happy works a dead-end job at the amusement park, biding his time and saving money for a clandestine journey to Europe, where hell finally land a breakout role. Little does he know that his immigration is being coordinated by a transnational crime syndicate. After a nightmarish passage to Italy, Happy still manages to find relief in food and fantasy, even as he is forced into ever-worsening work conditions over a debt he allegedly accrued in transit. But his daydreams grow increasingly at odds with his bleak reality, one shared by so many migrant workers disenfranchised by the systems that depend on their labor.
At turns funny and poetic, sunny and tragic, Happy is a daring feat of postmodern literature, a polyphonic novel about the urgent, lovely coping mechanisms created by generations of diasporic people. Set against the enmeshed crises of global migration and the politics of labor within the food industry, Celina Baljeet Basras luminous debut argues for the things that are essential to human survival: food, water, a place to lay ones head, but also pleasure, romance, art, and the inalienable right to a vivid inner life.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Playful, funny, and wildly free, Happy inhabits the seam between beauty and tragedy. A miraculous novel." - Megha Majumdar
"A bonkers story that reads like a fine ten-course meal." - Gary Shteyngart
"A bonkers story that reads like a fine ten-course meal." - Gary Shteyngart
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