About the Book
Winner of the Asian American Writers' Workshop Pages in Progress Prize
"A sparkling epic worthy of Bollywood's silver screens."
--Kirkus Reviews
"A delightful and perceptive jaunt into the heart of the Indian American community of New Jersey, Edison is a charming, often hilarious novel brimming over with life, laughter, and dreams worthy of the most outrageous Bollywood movies."
--Chitra Divakaruni, author of Independence and Mistress of Spices
"Reading Edison,
I kept feeling amazed that a single novel could do so much. Pallavi Sharma
Dixit has given us an unforgettable love story, a riotous comedy, a tender
coming-of-age tale, a history of an American city, and an homage to Indian
cinema, told with all the romance and drama and verve of the movies. Edison
is these things and more, a debut novel that arrives fully formed and
brilliant. I am simply in awe of this book."
--Nathan Hill, New
York Times bestselling author of Wellness (Oprah's Book Club) and The
Nix
"Pallavi Sharma Dixit's Edison
is as musical, unexpected, and over the top as the Bollywood that binds us. Get
ready to laugh, cry, and dance your way through this necessary book."
--S. Mitra Kalita, author
of Suburban Sahibs
"In this effervescent debut . . . a large cast of endearing characters, including Prem's roommates and the Bollywood performers he recruits, round out the story, which is enlivened by Dixit's natural gift for screwball comedy. This romp is one to savor."
--Publisher's Weekly
"A modern love story that will make your heart soar and a heartwarming tale that beautifully captures the transformation of an American community, Edison is a literary gem."
--Jafreen Uddin, Executive Director, Asian American Writers' Workshop
Edison is a Bollywood-style epic tale brimming with song and dance, action and comedy, love and pathos, and cameos by dozens of real Indian stars of yesterday and today--a hilariously entertaining masala film in the guise of literary fiction. Along the way, we glean bits of Bollywood history and fall in love with an improbable cast of characters that inhabits Edison's "Little India." Edison is a wild, romantic, laugh-out-loud love letter to the Indian American community of Edison, New Jersey, where author Pallavi Dixit grew up.
The unlikely star of Edison is Prem Kumar, the hapless youngest son of a titan of New Delhi industry. Obsessed with Hindi movies--what the world calls Bollywood--he is uninterested in joining the family business or marrying the spear-wielding heiress chosen by his father. He runs away to chase his filmmaking dreams in America, but his plans are immediately derailed. Instead, he finds himself crashing on a mattress and working at an Exxon gas station in the Indian immigrant community of Edison, New Jersey.
Though life is not going according to script, Prem finds a happy rhythm in this bewildering setting. When the beautiful and ambitious Leena Engineer bursts onto the scene, she and her grocery store-owning father upend Prem's short-term plan to do as little as possible, launching him on an epic adventure to make something of himself. Supported by an unruly cast of roommates, aunties, murderous yet orderly mobsters, and film stars at once glamorous and ludicrous, Prem test-drives the role of hero, and along the way, he witnesses around him the transformation of an ordinary suburb into a bustling "Little India."
