BORDER LESS

An excellent exciting debut ... powerful surprising and memorableCHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNIDia Mittal is an airline call-center agent in Mumbai searching for a better life. As her search takes her to the United States Dia's checkered relationship with the American Dream dialogues with the experiences and perspectives of a global South Asian community across the class spectrum-call-center agents travel agents immigrant maids fashion designers blue- and white-collar workers in the hospitality industry junior and senior artists in Bollywood hustling single mothers academics tourists in the Third World Afro-Asian refugees displaced by military superpowers Marwari merchants in the Thar Desert and trade caravans of the Silk Road among others.What connects the novel's web of border-crossing characters is their quest for belonging and a negotiation of power struggles mediated by race class gender nationality age or place.With its fragmented form staccato rhythm repetition and play with English language Namrata Poddar's Border Less questions and challenges the assumptions of the mainstream Western novel.