Malavika Kannan Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Malavika Kannan is a Tamil American writer.

Born in 2001, her work has been featured in publications such as New York, Teen Vogue, The Nation, The Washington Post, and more.

She relates that her villain origin story is that when she was a teen in Florida she organized for movements like March for Our Lives and the Women’s March. Her novel for young adults All the Yellow Suns came out in 2023 to great acclaim, a queer coming of age story that is set in Florida and based on her own personal experiences.

She is also the author of Unprecedented Times, a campus novel that is all about different college students who are making their way through life and love during the pandemic. Her work frequently crosses genres but also looks into themes of kinship, power, identity, desire and more in modern times.

She attended Stanford University and graduated and now writes books. She also moonlights as a gay socialite in Brooklyn, co-hosting the popular mutual aid supper club Girls Eat Girls. When not busy doing that or writing, she also works of drawing a comic series that is about survivorship.

Many readers who are young and young at heart, especially those online on Instagram, Substack, TikTok and more all turn to her to get her creative takes full of empathy and her original reporting. Her nonfiction has appeared in many different publications, including the Washington Post, The Nation, Teen Vogue, New York Magazine, Autostraddle, The Emancipator, and more.

She is also working on a collection of essays. Malavika had the rare opportunity in 2024 to teach a course at Stanford University called The Mindy Kaling Cinematic Universe, that was centered around topics involving pop culture and South Asian American identity.

All the Yellow Suns is a 2023 book by Malavika Kannan. If you enjoy stories that have queer themes and characters and are thoughtful enough to have you thinking about it once you’ve finished the last page, then this might be the book for you.

This is the story of a queer Indian American girl who is coming of age while also finding herself more through activism and exploring her identity through art. Can she navigate her own life and follow what she is passionate about without losing who she is?

Main character Maya Krishnan is sixteen years old. She loves her family and is protective of the things that she cares about, like her friends, her immigrant community, and her single mother. Even though she stands for her ideals, she is someone who knows that she likely should not rock the boat, particularly in the Florida suburb where she lives which is overly conservative.

Then there’s her classmate, who could not be more different. Juneau Zale is the opposite in nearly every way. She is a white breaker of hearts who is form a wealthy upbringing and has the boldness that is needed to rock the boat– and wouldn’t think twice before doing so.

Juneau ends up inviting Maya to join the Pugilists, which is a secret society of vandals, artists, and mischief-makers who are doing their best to fight for justice at their school. May ends up going deeply into a world that is full of resistance and people fighting to make a change. Through this, she and Juneau build a deeper friendship that even eventually inspires Maya to take on the challenges that she is facing in her life.

As the relationship between the two becomes increasingly complicated, it becomes apparent that there are romantic overtones. But their dynamic also becomes more painful, and the more that she gets to know her the more that Maya starts thinking that beneath the facade that Juneau has on that there is a different person entirely.

Now Maya is going to have to find out how to speak her truth in this strange and mixed-up world, and if it results in heartbreak, then so be it. What will happen in the end between the two of them, and will Maya’s participation in activist events end up working against her? Read this book to find out what happens!

Unprecedented Times is a 2026 book by Malavika Kannan. In this work, this author situates herself as one of the main literary voices to stand for Gen Z in another coming of age story that will have you riveted no matter where you are– at home, on a plane, in a library! Readers are calling this novel ‘incredible’ and ‘authentic’.

Rishi has come to Stanford to experience her first year on campus and thinks that her narrative is set. She’s going to leave behind her Indian-American childhood in Florida with all its strictness and find out who she is. Along the way, she’ll embrace her identity as queer, experiment with love, and write all that she can about it.

In the course of a few months, Rishi is able to get a new tattoo, make her first real best friend, falls into a situationship and falls in love even harder, and finds out that she does have a heart when she gets it broken. As far as Rishi is concerned, her first semester Asian American Autofiction final may as well be written in full.

What Rishi did not plan on happening was the COVID pandemic happening. No one could have predicted it, but it comes on quick and no one is prepared. The outside world becomes scary and Rishi ends up relying more and more on the friendships that she has made.

In place of attending virtual college, she decides to join a farm collective with her classmates. Along the way, she deals with America’s political situation as well as the growing disillusionment that comes along with it, and the responsibility and sexual tension, of course. When those relationships start to take the brunt of careless decisions, crushes, jealousies, and these unprecedented times, Rishi starts questioning her own story.

This story is beautifully written and is able to show readers the pain, love, beauty, frustration and more that can exist between all types of people and creates an engaging novel that few will forget!