Optional Practical Training

In Sunder’s astute and stimulating debut novel (after the collection Boomtown Girl), an Indian woman reckons with racial prejudice and draconian immigration laws in post-9/11 America. It’s 2006 when Pavitra graduates from college in the U.S., hoping to extend her stay as long as possible. She’s hired to teach math and physics at a Massachusetts private school where she hopes to receive a work visa and buy time to finish her novel, a pursuit considered “frivolous” by her parents and relatives back home in Bangalore. As Pavitra grapples with the weight of her family’s expectations, she realizes that her acquaintances in America also carry preconceived notions about her. For example, her white landlord assumes, for the sake of his own comfort, that she’s a member of the Brahmin caste. In conversations with her friends, Pavitra examines what it means to be perceived as a person of color (“The term ‘of color’ struck me as ridiculous. Only in America, it seemed to me, would people coin such labels as ‘person of color’ and ‘legal alien’ ”) and grapples with other unique aspects of American culture, such as the prizing of “an individual’s opinions.” In a striking climax, Pavitra confronts the limits of what she’s been promised by the school and of her ability to move freely between the U.S. and India, and the novel coheres into a crystalline portrait of a woman straddling cultures and expectations while attempting to discover who she is. It’s a knockout. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co. (Mar.)