This Is Salvaged

A daring and original voice, trembling with power and anger and vulnerability.” – Namita Gokhale

“It takes tremendous courage and wit to look with wonder at the darkest, most shameful places in the human heart and make them hilarious, tender, and deeply moving; Vauhini Vara … can do this magic with astonishing ease.” – Lauren Groff

In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This Is Salvaged search fervently for meaning through one another:

A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor who is descending into dementia…

A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators…

One sister consumes the ashes of another…

And, in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible’s specifications…

In stories that are wise and funny, beautiful and strange, Vauhini Vara-author of the award-winning The Immortal King Rao, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize-writes with compassion, but without sentimentality, about loss and longing and attempting to find hope in the midst of grief.

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