Award-Winning Janika Oza Book Discussion & Signing. May 10th

1030 Elysian Fields Avenue,New Orleans LA 70117

10 May, 2023

Description

A HISTORY OF BURNING is an epic, sweeping historical novel full of "wondrous complexity” spans continents and a century, and reveals how one act of survival can reverberate through generations (Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin). Janika Oza is the winner of the 2022 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction and the 2020 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Award. She has received support from The Millay Colony, Tin House Summer and Winter Workshops, VONA/Voices of Our Nation, and the One Story Summer Writers Conference. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications such as The Best Small Fictions 2019 Anthology, Catapult, The Adroit Journal, The Cincinnati Review, Anomaly, and The Malahat Review, among others. A chapter of this novel was longlisted for the 2019 CBC Short Story Prize and published in Prairie Schooner. She is a Features reader for The Rumpus and a 2020 Diaspora Dialogues long‑form fiction mentee. She lives in Toronto. “A riveting testament to home, exile, survival, and inheritance. Janika Oza is a writer you won’t want to miss” –Lisa Ko, National Book Award finalist for The Leavers “A History of Burning is that rare epic that manages to retain both its sweep and its intimacy. Janika Oza has written a generational saga vivid and alive with sensory and historical detail, an excavation of stories often left untold. There is so much insight here into the aftershocks of colonialism and displacement, the way one generation’s decisions, be they voluntary or compelled or somewhere in between, can reverberate through the ages and change lives yet to be lived. This is a beautiful book, unflinching yet deeply engaged with that most human work, the work of forgiveness.” –Omar El Akkad, author of American War “A History of Burning is as transfixing as a flame. Janika Oza writes strikingly and steadily, with exquisite, incisive detail, about making one’s home in imperfect places. This is a book about what it means to be part of a family and lineage, in all its heartbreaking and wondrous complexity.” –Rachel Khong, award-winning author Goodbye, Vitamin “Intimate and epic… A hymn for the ancestors, and the bitter, radiant acts of their survival: this book is a triumph.” –Shruti Swamy, author of A House is a Body “Oza’s writing reminds people that vulnerability and openness are the only ways we can save each other. A History of Burning is the art we need now.” –Megan Giddings, author of Lakewood “Ambitious in scope and dazzlingly executed... A tour de force.” –Sharon Bala, author of The Boat People Every family is made of the stories they tell each other—a tapestry of the joys and losses woven by one generation to the next. In Janika Oza’s debut novel, A HISTORY OF BURNING both the stories and silences that occur over the course of four generations of a family reverberate across India, East Africa, the United Kingdom, and Canada. An excavation of memory, the novel is told in the nine voices of one family, a testament to the fact that history is woven of many threads and never arrives whole. At the turn of the twentieth century, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India and tricked into indentured labor on the East African Railway for the British. One day Pirbhai commits an act of violence to ensure his survival that will haunt him forever and reverberate across his family’s future for years and generations to come. During the waning days of British colonial rule, and as Uganda moves toward independence and military dictatorship, Pirbhai’s children and grandchildren come of age in a divided nation. In 1972, under Idi Amin’s brutal regime, the family has no choice but to flee, and in the chaos, they leave something devastating behind. As the family finds their way back to each other in exile in Toronto, a letter arrives that will stoke the flames of the fire that haunts them all, making each generation question how far they are willing to go and who they are willing to defy to secure their own place in the world. A HISTORY OF BURNING is an unforgettable tour-de-force and an intimate family saga of complicity and resistance about the stories we share, the ones that remain unspoken, and the eternal search for home.