The Windfall [audio] by Diksha Basu [in Booklist]
Mr. Jha, who not so long ago comfortably supported his family on a monthly salary equivalent to $200, sells his website for $20 million. That titular windfall transforms his life, along with those of his family and friends. Money – who has it, how it’s spent, what it buys, what it can’t, what its true value is – drives Diksha Basu’s endearing and astute debut.
Welcome to Delhi, where the have-enoughs and the have-too-muches live rather separate lives. Mr. and Mrs. Jha’s move just a few miles to Gurgaon, one of Delhi’s elite neighborhoods, is about more than just distance from their housing-complex home of 30 years: “Here, in this new country, Mrs. Jha did not know the language.”
Ever-versatile Soneela Nankani enhances the global experience by narrating seamlessly in both American English and the more lyrical Indian English for conversations. Breezily entertaining enough to enthrall droves of summer’s beach and poolside readers, The Windfall also manages to seamlessly insert urgent, relevant themes of gender inequity, socioeconomic prejudice and aggression, familial expectations and constrictions, isolation, entitlement, and more.
Review: “Media,” Booklist Online, January 4, 2019
Readers: Adult
Published: 2017
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