A Small Sacrifice For An Enormous Happiness: Stories

An immersive, globe-trotting short story collection about families that cross borders from the National Jewish Book Award-winning author of A Play for the End of the World (“an impressive debut”—Meg Wolitzer). In the fourteen masterful stories that make up this collection, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to explore what it means to cultivate a family today, across borders, religions, and race. In the title story, a closeted gay man in 1980s Kolkata seeks to have a child with his lover’s wife. An Indian widow, engaged to a Jewish man, struggles to balance her cultural identity with the rituals and traditions of her newfound family. An American musician travels to see his guru for the final time—and makes a promise he cannot keep. A young woman from an Indian village arrives in Brooklyn to care for the toddler of a biracial couple. And a mystical agent is sent by a mother to solve her son’s domestic problems. Throughout, the characters’ most vulnerable desires shape life-altering decisions as they seek to balance their needs against those of the people they hold closest. The stories in A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness capture men and women struggling with transformation and familial bonds; they traverse the intersections of countries and cultures to illuminate what it means to love in uncertain times; and they showcase the skill of a storyteller who dazzles with the breadth of his vision.

• | Author: Jai Chakrabarti
• | Publisher: Knopf
• | Publication Date: Feb 21, 2023
• | Number of Pages: 272 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover
• | ISBN-10: 0525658947
• | ISBN-13: 9780525658948