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Karan Mahajan

Biography

Karan Mahajan

Karan Mahajan is the author of THE ASSOCIATION OF SMALL BOMBS, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, won the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review. His debut novel, FAMILY PLANNING, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He has been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books and other venues. He is an associate professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.

Books by Karan Mahajan

The Complex
by Karan Mahajan - Fiction

In a sprawling complex in Delhi, the sons and daughters of SP Chopra, one of India's political architects, live together vying for influence in a family shaped by the great man's legacy. By the late 1970s, his descendants are scrambling to define their own futures in a still-young nation on the brink of transformation. Sachin Chopra leaves for America, with his bride Gita following not long after, as the newlyweds are eager to forge their own lives beyond the pressures of the family compound. Yet Delhi remains an inescapable force, one that keeps pulling them back, even as Gita is menaced by Sachin’s predatory uncle, Laxman. Meanwhile, Vibha, his sister, tries to keep the peace and the reputation of the family intact even as she wrestles with her own exile.

The Association of Small Bombs
by Karan Mahajan - Fiction

When brothers Tushar and Nakul Khurana pick up their family’s television set at a repair shop with their friend, Mansoor Ahmed, one day in 1996, disaster strikes without warning. A bomb detonates in the Delhi marketplace, instantly claiming the lives of the Khurana boys, to the devastation of their parents. Mansoor survives, bearing the physical and psychological effects of the bomb. After a brief stint at university in America, Mansoor returns to Delhi, where his life becomes entangled with Ayub, a fearless young activist whose own allegiances and beliefs are more malleable than Mansoor could imagine.

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