A Great Country

A Novel

By: Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

Named an ELLE BEST BOOK OF 2024

Named a BEST or MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR by Readers’ Digest, Elle Magazine, CondeNast Traveler, Publishers’ Weekly, Indigo, ZibbyMag, Goodreads, BookBub & more

“A deeply moving, layered portrait of the hopes, dreams and fears a family carries as ‘other’ in the face of the modern American Dream."" -- Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push and The Whispers

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple.

For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member’s perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?

For readers of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, A Great Country explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream.

©2024 Shilpi Somaya Gowda (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

reader is excellent

pretty negative and preaching, but I kept listening because the reader was so excellent and interesting

Get ready!

Wow! Shilpi gives us another novel interwoven with thought-provoking topics like ethnicity and race in America, prejudice, social justice and what it means to be in community. Thank you again!

Incredible story

This book was so layered with so many different nuances for people to consider. The author did such a lovely job of illustrating, the complexities of different ethnicities, different occupations, and different caste systems… and there were several other social justice issues, but she cleverly gave each a different view so that it made you think about that person’s life experience. It’s a good lesson to consider one another’s journey instead of being so quick to judge or make assumptions.