| dc.description.abstract | This collection of seven short stories explores grief, toxic masculinity, and homesickness. In the opening story, “Prophecy,” a young man and his fiancé learn astrology in order to try to escape the xenophobia and toxic masculinity that rule the man’s household. In “Long Sleeves,” two teenage girls in Dubai sneak away to a New Year’s party, only to find that their relationship is forever changed as the night unfolds. In stories titled “Citizen” and “The Bridal Set,” characters who have long-ago renounced Mumbai as their home return for final romps through their hometowns, once again encountering the ghosts within it. In “Study Abroad” and “Those Days,” young women living in contemporary America revisit the violence they have experienced or witnessed at the hands of men, attempting to navigate their own stories and how to tell them to other women, in warning or in solidarity. No Country Other Than This traverses Mumbai, Dubai, and some major American cities, including Houston and Los Angeles. The stories take readers from living rooms to ice skating rinks to laborer’s accommodations, confronting the hidden effects of patriarchy, globalism, as well as portraits of love and power. The women and men in these stories look for ways in which to create new or better lives for themselves while they wrestle with the rigid limitations of patriarchy. Confronted by moments of change or remembering, the characters in these stories look to their pasts in order to better understand themselves, their loved ones, and their present moments. | |
