Talia Lakshmi Kolluri Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Talia Lakshmi Kolluri is a South Asian American writer who hails from Northern California.

Her debut book was a collection of short stories released by Tin House in 2022 titled What We Fed to the Manticore. It was a finalist for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the 2023 Northern California Book Award for Fiction.

It was also longlisted for the 2023 Aspen Words Literary Prize, the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and the 2023 Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. It was picked as a 2023 ALA RUSA Notable Book.

Her short fiction has been featured and published in places such as Orion, The Common, Southern Humanities Review, One Story, Five Dials, the Adroit Journal, Ecotone, and the minnesota review.

Talia has been a Californian for all of her life. She is married to her husband, who works as a teacher and a printmaker. They live together in the Central Valley close to the Sierra Nevada Mountains along with their two cats, one of whom is named Fig.

What We Fed to the Manticore is a 2022 collection of short stories by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri. This book is a great one to check out if you love a good short story and are always looking to experience a new voice in the literary world. Nominated for many awards, it is the perfect way to fill some time as you can flip around to different stories or start from the beginning and work your way through, whatever you prefer.

This book was acknowledged by many different publications and places as a Best Book of September upon its release. These include Bustle, Ms. Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Debutiful, Chicago Review of Books, and ALTAJournal. Orion named it a Best Book of Fall as well. So many publications have praised this work so be sure to see what everyone is talking about by getting a copy of What We Fed to the Manticore with your bookmark at the ready!

This collection of nine stories brings readers inside the mind space of a variety of animal narrators so that they can empathize with them and understand the feelings that they have as they also share our world. If you loved the adventures of Frog and Toad or have a soft spot in your heart for books like The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, you might really like this book.

These stories are all emotionally vivid in their own ways and they come from the point of view of the animal. This debut collection looks into themes of loss, belonging, conservation, environmentalism, family, and more with heart and a sense of tenderness that readers won’t find in any old story collection.

Different stories feature different animals and their different experiences. Vultures look for meaning as they attend to a dead antelope. A hound mourns the passing of an endangered rhino he said that he would protect. A wounded pigeon finds a friend in Delhi, and a donkey’s loyalty to his zookeeper is tested.

This collection of stories is completely unique and told in incredible detail. It takes into account the various animals that live in our world and what they might be thinking and feeling in exaggerated stories that show what they can go through and shows how they are part of this web of life along with us. An interesting read that you won’t want to miss, get a copy of What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri and follow along with each and every story for yourself.