An immersive, globe-trotting short story collection from the National Jewish Book Award-winning author of A Play for the End of the World (“an impressive debut” —Meg Wolitzer).

In the fourteen dazzling stories that make up this collection, Jai Chakrabarti crosses continents and cultures to excavate the lives of people in the throes of change. A closeted gay man in 1980’s Kolkata seeks to have a child with his lover’s wife. An Indian widow, engaged to a Jewish man, struggles to balance her cultural identity with the rituals and traditions of her newfound family. An American musician travels to see his guru for the final time—and makes a promise he cannot keep. A young woman from an Indian village arrives in Brooklyn to caretake the toddler of a biracial couple. And a mystical agent is sent by a mother to solve her son’s domestic problems.
 
Throughout, it is the character’s most vulnerable desires that power life-altering decisions. The stories in A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness capture men and women struggling with transformation and familial bonds; they traverse the intersections of countries and cultures to illuminate what it means to love in uncertain times; and they showcase the skill of a storyteller who dazzles with the breadth of his vision.
 

JAI CHAKRABARTI's short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize. Chakrabarti was an Emerging Writer Fellow with A Public Space and received his MFA from Brooklyn College. He was born in Kolkata, India, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family.