Press Release

Sanjena Sathian’s Debut Novel Gold Diggers Marks the Arrival of a Major Talent

HarperCollins Publishers India are delighted to announce the acquisition of

Gold Diggers
A Novel

by Sanjena Sathian

Publishing in May 2021

‘Dizzyingly original, fiercely funny, deeply wise’

– CELESTE NG, author of Little Fires Everywhere

‘A bravura performance from an exciting new voice’

– KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

 

A profoundly intelligent and bitingly funny exploration of identity and coming of age, Sanjena Sathian’s debut novel Gold Diggers marks the arrival of a major talent.

A floundering teenager growing up in Atlanta’s suburbs, Neil Narayan doesn’t have the same drive as everyone around him. His immigrant parents’ expectations for him are high, and he tries to want their version of success, but mostly, Neil just wants his neighbour Anita Dayal.

But Anita has a secret: she and her mother, Anjali, have been brewing an ancient alchemical potion from stolen gold that transfers the ambition of the jewellery’s original owner to the drinker. Anita needs just a little boost to get into Harvard, but when Neil – who needs a whole lot more – joins in the plot, events spiral into a tragedy that rips their community apart.

Spanning two continents, two coasts, and four epochs, Gold Diggers expertly balances social satire and magical realism, asking what a community must do to achieve the American dream.

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“I’m thrilled that Gold Diggers has a home at the vaunted HarperCollins India! As the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Malayali translators, my own literary heritage begins in India, and I’ve long dreamt of having readers there. Living in Mumbai for several years myself and interviewing my family about their time growing up and attending college in then-Bombay was essential in writing the book, so I’m delighted to bring the work to India.”

– SANJENA SATHIAN

“Sanjena Sathian’s Gold Diggers is the great Indian–American novel I’ve been waiting for – a keenly perceived, wonderfully intricate, genre-defining saga about Indians in America, and the Indian–American experience. Alchemy, aspiration, angst and hope bind this remarkable story together, and make for a magical concoction. Sanjena is a major new talent and Gold Diggers is certain to speak powerfully to many a reader here in India (and abroad), just as it did to me. I’m really pleased to be publishing this extraordinary book as part of the HarperCollins literary fiction list.”

– UDAYAN MITRA, Publisher – Literary, HarperCollins India

“We’re absolutely thrilled to have acquired the publishing rights to Sanjena Sathian’s brilliant debut Gold Diggers. A completely fresh, new take on the magic-real and the immigrant novel, it is a work that revitalizes both genres, even as it tackles the ever-relevant themes of identity and coming of age. Sanjena Sathian is an incredibly exciting new voice, and we at HarperCollins are looking forward very much to bringing this riveting, funny and wise book to Indian readers.”

– RAHUL SONI, Executive Editor – Literary, HarperCollins India

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About the Author

Sanjena Sathian was raised in the US by Indian immigrant parents. She’s a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and has also worked as a journalist based in San Francisco and in Mumbai.

 Her award-winning short fiction appears in Conjunctions, Boulevard, Joyland, Salt Hill, and The Master’s Review. She’s written nonfiction for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Food and Wine, and more. She has taught creative writing to high school, college and graduate students in Iowa, Alaska and New Zealand, and she recently founded the Bombay Writers’ Workshop.

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 About HarperCollins Publishers India

HarperCollins Publishers India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers. HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Prabha Khaitan Woman’s Voice Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and the Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India has been awarded the Publisher of the Year Award three times: at Publishing Next in 2015, and at Tata Literature Live! in 2016 and 2018.

HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Egmont, Oneworld, Harvard University Press, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet.

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For more information please write to Shivendra Singh at
shivendra.singh@harpercollins.co.in

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