The Association of Small Bombs: A Novel

Karan Mahajan grew up in New Delhi, India. His first novel, Family Planning, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize and published in nine countries. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR's All Things Considered, and many other publications. A graduate of Stanford University and the Michener Center for Writers, he lives in Austin, Texas.

''Wonderful... smart, devastating, unpredictable and enviably adept in its handling of tragedy and its fallout. If you enjoy novels that happily disrupt traditional narratives - about grief, death, violence, politics - I suggest you go out and buy this one. Post haste... thrilling, tender and tragic... generous without prejudice, which feels at once subversive and refreshing'' -- Fiona Maazel The New York Times Book Review

''An utterly brilliant book. Rarely does one encounter a work as masterful in the precision of its writing or as penetrating in the insights it provides. Karan Mahajan is a writer to be admired.''-- Kevin Powers

''Karan Mahajan's thoughtful, touching and perfectly pitched account of two marketplace bombings and the casual havoc they cause in a handful of Delhi families is almost subversive in its even-handedness and its charity. For all its unflinching - and unnerving - fatalism, The Association of Small Bombs is an unusually wise, tender, and generous novel.'' -- Jim Crace

''A voracious approach to fiction-making, a daring imaginative promiscuity... he renders the spectacle of the bombing with a languid, balletic beauty, pitting the unhurried composure of his prose against the violence of the events it describes... Mahajan hasn't lost his sharp comic impulses... [Mahajan's] facility for gorgeous turns of phrase produces many passages of vivid, startling power.'' -- Alexandra Schwartz The New Yorker

''In Mahajan's riveting, intricate story, the aftershocks of small bombs are as inescapable as their explosions.'' --Alex Traub Vice Magazine

''The ordinary humanity in these characters -- before, during, and after tragedy besets them -- is the strength of this audiobook, and of Neil Shah's narration...Shah eschews the melodramatic, instead leaving the room needed to hear the wailing of mothers, the confusion of fathers, and the disenfranchisement of youth. In 'keeping it real,' Shah ensures that listeners connect with Mahajan's story.'' --AudioFile

''The Association of Small Bombs is not the first novel about the aftermath of a terrorist attack, but it is the finest I've read at capturing the seduction and force of the murderous, annihilating illogic that increasingly consumes the globe.'' --Wall Street Journal

''The Association of Small Bombs is a brilliant examination of aftermath, how life is built of consequences, both imagined and unimagined, the tight web of human life and human sympathy. Karan Mahajan knows everyone, on every side of a detonation: the lost, the grieving, the innocent, the guilty, the damaged. It's hilarious and also devastating. Karan Mahajan is a virtuoso writer, and this is a wonderful book.'' --Elizabeth McCracken, Story Prize-winning author of Thunderstruck & Other Stories

''The Association of Small Bombs, which tracks the aftermath of a blast in Delhi in 1996, is a work of disabused intelligence and staggering compassion -- for the victims and even for the terrorists, all of whom are rendered whole, even if they're in pieces. Its political subtlety is laudable for how relentlessly it's paced, and the grace of its prose acts like a balm to its trauma.'' --Joshua Cohen, author of Book of Numbers

''Has the sweep, wisdom, and sensibility of the old masters. Urgent and masterful, this novel shows us how bystander, bomber, victim, and survivor will forever share a patch of scorched ground.'' --Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

''[Mahajan is] strong at exploring the very long shockwaves of small-scale violence...[A] novel that's alert to the intersection of the emotional and political.'' --Kirkus Reviews