Akhil Sharma delivers eight stories that focus on Indian protagonists at home and abroad, plunging readers into the unpredictable workings of the human heart. A young woman in an arranged marriage awakens one day surprised to find herself in love with her husband. A retired divorcé tries to become the perfect partner by reading women’s magazines. A man’s longstanding contempt for his cousin suddenly shifts inward when he witnesses his cousin caring for a sick woman. The protagonists in A LIFE OF ADVENTURE AND DELIGHT deceive themselves and engage in odd behaviors as they navigate how to be good, how to make meaningful relationships, and the strengths and pitfalls of self-interest.

We meet the Mishra family in Delhi in 1978, where eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother, Birju, are waiting for the day when their plane tickets will arrive and they and their mother can fly across the world and join their father in America. Life is extraordinary until tragedy strikes, leaving one brother severely brain-damaged and the other lost and virtually orphaned in a strange land. Ajay prays to a God he envisions as Superman, longing to find his place amid the ruins of his family’s new life.