Publishers Weekly
★ 05/01/2023
The protagonists in Injam’s dynamic and insightful debut collection explore cultural identity and family relationships in India and the U.S. In “The Bus,” the narrator, a customer support worker for Bank of America, takes an hours-long bus ride from Bengaluru to his hometown to visit his parents. The trip turns eerie as one passenger after another gets up to use the restroom and then disappears, and the remaining passengers feel the need to escape as the air in the bus grows increasingly cold. It seems their journey ends in their deaths, though a playful tone offsets the morbid theme (“I knew about planes, but I didn’t know these things happen on buses too,” the narrator’s seatmate tells him). In “The Immigrant,” Aditya plans to relocate to Philadelphia from India to help earn money for his mother’s lung transplant. On arrival in the U.S., he’s met at the airport by Indian students who advise him on how to act around white people. The inventive form of “The Math of Living” conveys how a coder at the Chicago Tribune reflects in mathematical terms on his impending visit back to India, where he expects everything to be “formulaic” after reuniting with his family (“My father will do or . My mother will do or ”). Injam succeeds in equal measure with the variety of styles, and he offers enriching details about the various experiences his characters face as immigrants and offshore workers. This is a triumph. (July)
From the Publisher
Longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction
Longlisted for The Story Prize
Named a Best Book of the Year by the Chicago Review of Books
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
An NPR Book of the Week
Publishers Weekly Book of the Week
“Stunning…Injam’s narratives strike a perfect balance of darkness and light.”
—New York Times Book Review
"So rich and so beautiful."
—Sacha Pfeiffer, NPR's "Weekend Edition"
"Hilarious, heartrending, and wise, Nishanth Injam's stories made me want to cast all else aside and return home.”
—Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
“The Best Possible Experience is a full-hearted, brilliant debut full of necessary beauty. Injam writes of longing, of love, of home and of the Indian diaspora, and as one reads the stories, they find that together they create an epic mosaic of life.”
—Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars
“In Nishanth Injam's enthralling, deeply intimate stories, characters contend with what it takes to survive grief, heartbreak, disappointment, another culture, and each other. Full of surprises and truly breathtaking moments, this is an exquisite debut!”
—Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
"In these wise, intricate stories, Nishanth Injam shows us, with lancing clarity, the shame and embarrassment of immigration, the ways in which relationships form and dissolve around silences. His is an arresting new voice in contemporary Indian—and American—fiction."
—Karan Mahajan, author of Association of Small Bombs
“The stories in The Best Possible Experience paint a gorgeous and devastating portrait of what it costs, literally and psychically, to make a new life away from home. Nishanth Injam has a gift for capturing complex characters facing the unsettling strangeness of unfamiliar places and increasingly unfamiliar selves. This is a graceful and sophisticated debut from a wonderful new writer.”
—Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections
"These hauntingly beautiful stories of arrivals and departures, of love and loss, are a reminder of the transporting power of fiction. The Best Possible Experience is quite possibly the best debut collection of the year."
—Peter Ho Davies, author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself
“An emotionally rich collection of short stories that paint a fascinating portrait of contemporary India and its diaspora. Nishanth Injam’s stories prod at our understanding of home and departure with a classical elegance and modern eye. Beautiful at both the individual and collective levels, The Best Possible Experience is truly a profound debut.”
—Chicago Review of Books, “12 Must Read Books of July 2023”
“Alive with vivid, vibrant, and affecting writing…powerful portrait…This collection is truly a can’t-miss release.”
—Chicago Review of Books, “The Most Anticipated Chicago Books of 2023”
“Injam’s sparse language and attention to detail render the subtlest conflicts with tenderness and care…We witness a spectrum of social classes, castes, religions, and other identities clashing and interacting in these short stories. Just as there is no one way to be Indian, Injam demonstrates that there is no one way to depict the tenuous relationship between home and migration, or between necessary phases of growth and change.”
—Chicago Review of Books, “Transition as Entry Point in The Best Possible Experience”
“Stunning…The Best Possible Experience is not just a story collection about immigration or immigrants, but about our capacity to feel, to tap into the deepest parts of ourselves, and an exploration of what we find in those depths.”
—Chicago Review of Books, “The Oceans Inside of You: A Conversation with Nishanth Injam”
“Dynamic and insightful…Injam succeeds in equal measure with the variety of styles, and he offers enriching details about the various experiences his characters face as immigrants and offshore workers. This is a triumph.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Perceptive and penetrating…A quietly powerful look at a fundamental human desire—for a sense of home, a place to belong…Injam compares and contrasts his many characters, their situations and experiences—specifically, what constitutes home for them and how they cope. Masterful descriptions convey their heart-rending memories and hard-hitting emotions. An enlightening collection full of cultural and societal insights, The Best Possible Experience is a must for readers who loved Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Samanta Schweblin’s Seven Empty Houses.”
—BookPage, starred review
“Eleven gems make up Injam’s stellar debut short-story collection showcasing exquisite quotidian beauty haunted by seemingly inevitable loss…“The Best Possible Experience,” which proves to be exactly what Injam provides lucky readers.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Vivid examples of the emotional price relocation extracts from individuals leaving their homes for better prospects…What marks this well-crafted collection of stories as special is its candidness, as well as, the maturity of the author’s voice.”
—Money Control
"Meticulously crafted narratives…Eloquent meditations on grief…An array of characters and circumstances that capture contemporary concerns with grace; the language, well-rendered details, and strong story structures combine to deliver revelations. Injam’s title story, in particular, is a testament to his command of the short form.”
—Kirkus
Kirkus Reviews
2023-05-09
Young Indians and Indian Americans try to find their footings in the world in this contemplative debut story collection.
In “The Bus,” the opening story, a man embarks on what proves to be a strange and unexpectedly perilous visit to his hometown. In “Summers of Waiting,” a woman living in the U.S. returns to India to visit the dying grandfather who raised her. For Aditya, in “The Immigrant,” his first semester as a graduate student in the U.S. is a struggle to survive. In “The Protocol,” another Indian immigrant seeking to stay in the U.S. takes a chance by marrying an American woman for a visa. Most of Injam’s characters experience deep emotion but don't know how to communicate their love and longing, perhaps constrained by societal expectations of their gender, sexuality, or religion in expressing how they feel. Many of the stories serve as eloquent meditations on grief, but “Lunch at Paddy's,” which tries to be more lighthearted, falls flat. In it, a man named Padmanabham is bewildered by what to serve when his son invites a White school friend to lunch. While some of the humor lands (what kind of grocery store doesn’t stock Maggi?), the story’s attempt to showcase the multifaceted anxieties of recent immigrants doesn’t quite work; why doesn’t anyone, including the two kids plenty exposed to American culture, suggest ordering a pizza? But almost every other story offers readers at least one moment of pure literary satisfaction. Linked by theme and tone, the entries are different enough to merit the reader’s investment in the rich worlds the author creates for each of them. While the collection takes little risk, it offers an array of characters and circumstances that capture contemporary concerns with grace; the language, well-rendered details, and strong story structures combine to deliver revelations. Injam’s title story, in particular, is a testament to his command of the short form.
Injam comes close to fulfilling the promise of his title with these meticulously crafted narratives.