One Amazing Thing

by Chitra Divakaruni

The scene: Late afternoon in a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but a punky teenager, an upper-class Caucasian couple, a young Muslim-American man, and five others remain. Out of nowhere, an earthquake rips through the lull, trapping these nine disparate people together, with little food and no way to escape the slowly flooding office. When the psychological and emotional stress becomes nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, “one amazing thing” from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself.

(From Publisher).

Chitra Divakaruni is an award-winning and bestselling writer, poet, and fifteen-time novelist. Her writing has appeared in more than fifty magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker. She is the Betty and Gene McDavid Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston.

The author tells as much about the diversity of Indian culture as they do about the American "melting pot", which lets some groups Americanize more successfully than others. Divarkaruni presents snapshots that speak volumes about the characters, so unexpectedly drawn together.