Peacocks of Instagram is a fresh and intimate debut collection of short stories suffused with the dilemmas, heartbreaks, and joys of diasporic Indians.
In these brilliant and witty stories, Deepa Rajagopalan centres a cast of Indian women who are flawed, enterprising, and filled with desire. In the award-winning title story, an underappreciated server in a coffee shop attracts tens of thousands of followers on social media with her peacock accessories. A hotel housekeeper up against a world of gender and class inequality quietly gets revenge on her chauvinist boss. A young woman navigates the landscape of loneliness after abruptly leaving her home in India by learning to drive over it. An eight-year-old finds her entire life uprooted when her mother needs a new kidney. A fiercely independent engineer does not decamp to the sidelines of an affair but takes up space, living her life as variously as possible.
Peacocks of Instagram deftly questions what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home. With an intense awareness of privilege and the lack of it, these fourteen subtle and affecting stories explore and indulge in the imperfection of the human condition.
Peacocks of Instagram is a fresh and intimate debut collection of short stories suffused with the dilemmas, heartbreaks, and joys of diasporic Indians.
In these brilliant and witty stories, Deepa Rajagopalan centres a cast of Indian women who are flawed, enterprising, and filled with desire. In the award-winning title story, an underappreciated server in a coffee shop attracts tens of thousands of followers on social media with her peacock accessories. A hotel housekeeper up against a world of gender and class inequality quietly gets revenge on her chauvinist boss. A young woman navigates the landscape of loneliness after abruptly leaving her home in India by learning to drive over it. An eight-year-old finds her entire life uprooted when her mother needs a new kidney. A fiercely independent engineer does not decamp to the sidelines of an affair but takes up space, living her life as variously as possible.
Peacocks of Instagram deftly questions what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home. With an intense awareness of privilege and the lack of it, these fourteen subtle and affecting stories explore and indulge in the imperfection of the human condition.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — May 7, 2024 |
| Specifications | 272 pages | 5.5 in x 7 in |
| Written By |
DEEPA RAJAGOPALAN won the 2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies such as the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, the New Quarterly, Room, the Malahat Review, Event, and Arc. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. Born to Indian parents in Saudi Arabia, she has lived in many cities across India, the US, and Canada. Deepa works in the tech industry in Toronto. |
| Written By |
|
DEEPA RAJAGOPALAN won the 2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies such as the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, the New Quarterly, Room, the Malahat Review, Event, and Arc. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph. Born to Indian parents in Saudi Arabia, she has lived in many cities across India, the US, and Canada. Deepa works in the tech industry in Toronto. |
Peacocks of Instagram not only questions our stereotypes about the immigrant past, but about the immigrant present as well. This is an original, dynamic voice poised to enrich the culturally varied field of Canadian fiction.
” —PEN Canada New Voices jury