Rishi Reddi Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Rishi Reddi is a published American author.

She was born in Hyderabad, India, and grew up in the United Kingdom and the United States. She has been a long-time resident of Massachusetts.

Rishi Reddi attended Swarthmore College and Northeastern University School of Law. She is the author of the 2020 book Passage West, which was named a Los Angeles times “Best California Book of 2020” and wrote the 2007 collection Karma and Other Stories, which received the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for outstanding fiction.

She is an essayist, a book reviewer, and a translator. Her work appears in Best American Short Stories, was performed on National Public Radio, and was selected for honorable mention in the Pushcart Prize.

Reddi has been awarded Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists Colony, Breadloaf, and the National Book Critics Circle. She has also received grants from the United States Department of State and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, among others.

Karma and Other Stories is a 2007 collection of stories from Rishi Reddi. Multi-generational and international, the characters in her stories long for the comfort of the past while building unfamiliar new lives in America.

Finding the right balance between traditional Indian culture and the pull of contemporary Western life becomes a high stakes juggling act which becomes a gamble that they cannot always win.

A contentious septuagenarian ends up reuniting with a childhood friend after an unlikely argument that goes down threatens to erase decades of history. Meanwhile, a fifteen-year acquaintance with the town’s librarian is close to tempting a middle-aged housewife to consider the unthinkable.

Then there is a young, assimilated college student who ends up condemning her best friend for agreeing to an arranged marriage because she doesn’t agree. Meanwhile, a widow decides to flee her son’s comfortable American life and returns to the village of her birth, and a young husband and father finds success unfortunately elusive and chooses to spend his days on Boston’s wintry streets doing charity in rescuing injured birds.

Hopeful, proud, lonely and despairing, Reddi’s characters and the stories that are built up around them not only bring to life the struggle between tradition and a new way of life but also bear witness to the common ground that we all share. That she is able to transcend the confines of immigrant literature and examine many themes such as love, loss, duty, and family speaks to her gifts as an artist.

Passage West is a 2020 novel from Rishi Reddi. It was picked as a Los Angeles Times Best California Book of 2020 and a New England Independent Booksellers’ 2020 New England Book Award Finalist. It is a recommended book from Bustle, The Millions, Teen Vogue, and BookRiot.

This is a vibrant first novel that follows along with a family of Indian sharecroppers at the oncoming approach of World War I, a little known or rarely focused on part of California history.

The year is 1914, and Ram Singh has arrived in the Imperial Valley on the Mexican border. He has reluctantly taken on his friend Karak’s offer of work and partnership in a small cantaloupe farm. Ram is unmoored as he is fleeing violence in the state of Oregon but at the same time, he is longing to go back to his wife and their newborn son in Punjab. However, he is duty-bound to first make his fortune.

Meanwhile in the Valley, American settlement is still new and as it turns out the rules are constantly shifting. Alongside Karak is Jivan and his wife, Kishen, as well as Amarjeet, a U.S. soldier. Ram is having a hard time trying to farm in the desert which forgives little.

When he meets an attractive woman who it turns out has fought in Mexico’s revolution, he makes every effort that he can to stay true and loyal to his wife. The Valley turns out to be full of settlers who are hailing from different cities and other continents.

The stakes are fairly high and it is apparent that times are desperate. It could take just one bad harvest or a stolen crop to completely destabilize a family. As anti- immigrant sentiment goes higher among white residents, it could be that the accumulated tensions of life in the west end up finally boiling over.

Who is welcome in America? Rishi Reddi explores that questions in her ambitious debut novel that is richly imagined and beautifully brought to life. Grab a copy to explore this novel for yourself today!