The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergi..., Balli Kaur Jaswal
The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergi..., Balli Kaur Jaswal
7 Rating(s)
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
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The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters
A Novel

Author: Balli Kaur Jaswal

Narrator: Soneela Nankani, Deepti Gupta

Unabridged: 13 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 04/30/2019


Synopsis

The author of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows follows her acclaimed America debut with this life-affirming, witty family drama—an Indian This Is Where I Leave You—about three Punjabi sisters embarking on a pilgrimage to their homeland to lay their mother to rest.The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters—Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirnia—were never close and barely got along growing up, and now as adults, have grown even further apart. Rajni, a school principal is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a thirty-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking ""good"" sister married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life.On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites. After a trip to India with her mother long ago, Rajni vowed never to return. But she’s always been a dutiful daughter, and cannot, even now, refuse her mother’s request. Jezmeen has just been publicly fired from her television job, so the trip to India is a welcome break to help her pick up the pieces of her broken career. Shirina’s in-laws are pushing her to make a pivotal decision about her married life; time away will help her decide whether to meekly obey, or to bravely stand up for herself for the first time.Arriving in India, these sisters will make unexpected discoveries about themselves, their mother, and their lives—and learn the real story behind the trip Rajni took with their Mother long ago—a momentous journey that resulted in Mum never being able to return to India again.The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is a female take on the Indian travel narrative. ""I was curious about how different the trip would be if it were undertaken by women, who are vulnerable to different dangers in a male-dominated society,"" Balli Kaur Jaswal writes. ""I also wanted to explore the tensions between tradition and modernity in immigrant communities, and particularly how those tensions play out among women like these sisters, who are the first generation to be raised outside of India.""Powerful, emotionally evocative, and wonderfully atmospheric, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is a charming and thoughtful story that illuminates the bonds of family, sisterhood, and heritage that tether us despite our differences. Funny and heartbreaking, it is a reminder of the truly important things we must treasure in our lives.

About Balli Kaur Jaswal

The daughter of a diplomat, Balli Kaur Jaswal was born in Singapore and grew up in Japan, Russia, and the Philippines. She received a BA in Creative Writing from Hollins University in Virginia and a PhD from Singapore’s Nanyang Technical University. Her essays and op-eds about diaspora, censorship, racism, and sexuality have appeared in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, The South China Morning Post, Harper’s Bazaar, and Salon.com. She lives with her family in Singapore, where she is a professor at Yale-NUS.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nilufer on October 09, 2020

Five amazing sisterhood of the traveling in saris stars ! Nameste! I found a real gem! A sweet, inspirational, heartwarming book ! I loved this kind of book no matter what’s your gender, nationality, religion, culture, race you have, it embraces you tightly and make you feel deeply for the characters......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on May 03, 2019

"I also want you to experience the familiararity of our ancestrial state. You girls are British, yes. But all the generations of our family before you lived in India. It is in your blood. The language, the food, the way things are. These things are not erased just because you grew up elsewhe......more

Goodreads review by Berit☀️✨ on May 07, 2019

beautifully told this story was bursting with culture, family dynamics, and love! Balli Kuar Jaswal completely captivated me with this engaging story about these three dynamic sisters. I felt as though I was wisked away to India along with the Shergill Sisters. Jaswal’s writing is so descriptive, s......more

Goodreads review by luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) on August 28, 2021

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | An absorbing start gives way to an increasingly frustrating reiteration of the same argumentswhich provided little character development. “Grief came to her like a series of aftershocks—every time she thought she had moved on, something new reminded her of Mum.” The Un......more

Goodreads review by Resh (The Book Satchel) on May 24, 2019

Loved it. Rating : 4.5 stars I expected something along the lines of Erotic stories for Punjabi widows. But this was gold. It captures the not-so-close sisters who are on a pilgrimage to fulfill their mother's death bed wish. The scenes of the British sisters adapting to the land of their parents had......more