South Haven: A Novel - Softcover

"Sawhney's portrait of childhood grief is complex and explosive, and it challenges the definition of "victim."
--Minnesota Public Radio

"Readers will come to love South Haven's Siddharth and to care for this motherless boy in an immigrant family . . . Sawhney's writes in lucid prose about a cast of flawed characters . . . Despite the contentious behavior there is an underlying tenderness to the family dynamic. This lends South Haven a density that makes it more than a simple coming-of-age novel."
--Jaggery Lit

"This book became insight into what the life of a South Asian family is like in suburbia here in the US. But it remained a sharp, sensitive comment on adolescence and how much we still struggle to do well by our youth. Sawhney leaves us with a good cliffhanger in the end which I admired. He didn't have to tell us how each character turned out in life but lets us imagine their further existence."
--WORD Bookstores, Staff pick

Included in John Reed's list of Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2016 at Big Other

"This story was absolutely beautifully written. I found myself unable to stop turning page after page as I immersed myself in this book fully. It is a gripping story from start to finish, as you read hoping that this family will finally come to terms with their loss. A definite 10 stars out of 5 star read."
--The Reading Wolf

"A son of Hindu immigrants from India grows up in a New England suburb, where he struggles to find his way after his mother dies, while his father becomes immersed in anti-Muslim fundamentalism."
--World Wide Work

"A novelist you will be reading for years to come."
--Amy Bloom, author of Lucky Us

"South Haven is an affecting tale of a family's loss, a child's grief, and the search for solace in all the wrong places. Hirsh Sawhney is an incandescent voice in fiction."
--Laila Lalami, author of The Moor's Account

"It's no secret that grief makes us vulnerable, but Hirsh Sawhney's perceptively rendered South Haven presents a volatile mix of second-generation migration, sadness, and cruelty in suburban America. South Haven is bold, accessible, funny, and heartbreaking."
--Jayne Anne Phillips, author of Quiet Dell

"Hirsh Sawhney writes with wit and tenderness about a harsh childhood. And such is his power of insight that this novel, set in a New England suburb, manages to illuminate a larger landscape of cruelty and torment."
--Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire

"Hirsh Sawhney has produced an intelligent and beautiful novel. It is about America and India, fathers and children, families and loss. The world is changing and here is a new map of belonging."
--Nadeem Aslam, author of The Blind Man's Garden

"A lyrical yet disturbing look at the grim realities of migration and American suburban life, South Haven manages to be both witty and unnerving at the same time. It is a novel that resonates long in the memory."
--Caryl Phillips, author of The Lost Child

"A vivid portrait of second-generation immigrants living in suburban New England...Sawhney is pitch-perfect when describing the uneasy relationship between adolescents and their parents...There is much emotional truth in the author's sensitive portrayal of the despair and rage that can simmer away throughout adolescence...Hirsh Sawhney's quietly devastating conclusion is both unexpected and deeply moving."
--Times Literary Supplement

"[T]his luminous debut...captures precisely the heartache of growing up."
--Library Journal, Top Spring Indie Fiction

"Sawhney's debut novel, a coming-of-age tale mixing grief, violence, and extremism, follows the life of Indian-American teen Siddharth Arora as he deals with the death of his mother, political tensions at home, and attempts to fit in amongst the bored and troubled youth of his Connecticut suburb...With shifting teen angst colliding with his new, upturned reality, Sid becomes aware of his failings and mistakes as he discovers what it means to be loyal to the ones you love. This is a fantastic debut about growing up as an outsider in a divisive environment."
--Publishers Weekly

"Sawhney weaves together his own plot, with heartbreaking difficulties about confronting the complexity of identities, with nationally and locally important issues like Islamophobia, all painted on a southern Connecticut backdrop."
--Connecticut Magazine

"In his debut novel, South Haven, writer Hirsh Sawhney chose his native New Haven and suburbs as backdrop for this part tale of mourning, part coming-of-age story...Sawhney skillfully captures Siddharth's readjustment to a life without his mother. Much of this readjustment centers around the different and complex relationships Siddharth forms with the handful of friends he makes following his mother's death, his college-bound brother, the 'new woman' in his Dad's life, and with his larger-than-life father, a radically opinionated academic who is caught between what it means to be American and the culture he's left behind."
--New Haven Magazine

"A powerful story...a universal look at the complexity of how people wrestle with guilt and blame amid tragic loss."
--New Haven Independent

"[A] sensitive, poignant, resonating novel."
--Bookslut

"A raw portrait of a motherless family...poetic...[Sawhney's] characters are distinctive: They open up differently, more ominously, than American fiction's best-known South Asians of the Northeast--Jhumpa Lahiri's...[and] exhibit an outsider-ness without glamour."
--The Village Voice

"An unforgettable and unnerving tale of grief and migration."
--Largehearted Boy

Siddharth Arora lives an ordinary life in the New England suburb of South Haven, but his childhood comes to a grinding halt when his mother dies in a car accident. Siddharth soon gravitates toward a group of adolescent bullies, drinking and smoking instead of drawing and swimming. He takes great pains to care for his depressive father, Mohan Lal, an immigrant who finds solace in the hateful Hindu fundamentalism of his homeland and cheers on Indian fanatics who murder innocent Muslims. When a new woman enters their lives, Siddharth and his father have a chance at a fresh start. They form a new family, hoping to leave their pain behind them.

South Haven is no simple coming-of-age tale or hero's journey, blurring the line between victim and victimizer and asking readers to contend with the lies we tell ourselves as we grieve and survive. Following in the tradition of narratives by Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz, Sawhney draws upon the measured lyricism of postcolonial writers like Michael Ondaatje but brings to his subjects distinctly American irreverence and humor.