Beggar's Feast is a novel about a man who lives in defiance of fate. Sam Kandy was born in 1889 to low prospects in a Ceylon village and died one hundred years later as the wealthy headman of the same village, a self-made shipping magnate, and father of sixteen, three times married and twice widowed. In four parts, this enthralling novel tells Sam's story from his boyhood—when his parents, convinced by his horoscope that he would be a blight upon the family, abandon him at the gat...

A brilliant biography of one of the intellectual mavericks of 20th Century Catholicism.Richard John Neuhaus (1936-2009) was one of the most influential figures in American public life from the Civil Rights era to the War on Terror. His writing, activism, and connections to people of power in religion, politics, and culture secured a place for himself and his ideas at the center of recent American history. William F. Buckley, Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith are compa...

*NEW YORK TIMES, BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE**NOMINATED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY PRIZE*Randy Boyagoda's Beggar's Feast is a tour de force of a novel set in Sri Lanka about a man living in defiance of fate.'Gleaming . . . An ambitious book that seeks to convey the sweep of history through the prism of one island' Sara Wheeler, New York TimesSam Kandy, born in a poor ...

Sam Bokarie is an ex–African warlord who moves to small-town Canada to capitalize on its zealous hospitality. Based in part on a notoriously vicious figure, this debut novel responds to this warlord’s mysterious disappearance by imagining what would happen if he turned up in Canada and aligned himself with an ambitious but clumsy politician. With searing wit, Boyagoda has created a powerful tale of political ambition and unlikely alliances that reviewers hailed as genius.

Salman Rushdie once observed that William Faulkner was the writer most frequently cited by third world authors as their major influence. Inspired by the unexpected lines of influence and sympathy that Rushdie’s statement implied, this book seeks to understand connections between American and global experience as discernible in twentieth-century fiction. The worldwide imprint of modern American experience has, of late, invited reappraisals of canonical writers and classic national themes fr...

"A book that's a feast, an occasion and a celebration. Randy Boyagoda delightfully skewers the industrial-academic complex but also creates moving characters who seem to have walked in from the dorm and faculty meeting next door. The result is as moving as it is hysterically funny." —Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Vera, or FaithAn epic campus novel about the hopes and hypocrisies of 21st-century higher education, fro...

'As moving as it is hysterically funny' Gary Shteyngart, author of Vera, or Faith'Tender, eviscerating, perfect' Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao'Sparkling, humane and irresistible' Garth Risk Hallberg, author of City on FireDevi is a Sri Lankan village girl who dreams of going to Harvard. Devi's father cleans toilets in a five-star hotel to...

"A book that's a feast, an occasion and a celebration. Randy Boyagoda delightfully skewers the industrial-academic complex but also creates moving characters who seem to have walked in from the dorm and faculty meeting next door. The result is as moving as it is hysterically funny." —Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Vera, or FaithAn epic campus novel about the hopes and hypocrisies of 21st-century higher education, fro...