Author’s Corner

Varun Gauri was born in India and raised in the American Midwest. After studying philosophy in college and public policy in graduate school, he worked for more than two decades on global poverty and human rights, publishing academic articles and books on development economics and behavioral economics. He now teaches at Princeton University and lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland. His short fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and recognized in Best American Nonrequired Reading. He was a Summer Writer-in-Residence at Washington, DC’s The Inner Loop. His debut novel, For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus, won the 2024 Carol Trawick Fiction Prize and was selected for NPR’s Books We Love 2024.

Disillusioned with modern romance, globe-trotting Meena tries an arranged marriage with Avi, an aspiring politician in Ohio. But when Avi’s political opponent launches racist attacks, Meena and Avi are forced to defend their immigrant community, which narrowly understands its own traditions, and protect their increasingly shaky relationship. This is an intimate, funny, and heartbreaking novel about small-town America and the politics of marriage.

Meena pushed aside her veil.  The gold bangles, heavy on her wrists, slid and clinked. She feared the audience would find the gesture graceless, clumsy, but she had to see his eyes. She would in moments be the wife of this man in the groom’s headdress. Maybe she already was his wife. The Vedic ceremony, hours of venerable ritual, had no vows, no exchange of rings, no single moment when choice, her will, exercised its prerogatives.

Perhaps sensing her nervousness, Avi caught her eye and motioned across the temple ballroom. He was offering the wedding finery for reassurance. He pointed up at the beautiful mandap, adorned with white and pink carnations, yellow marigolds, and fragrant red roses. He was smiling warmly, and his expression seemed to say, These old, magnificent powers guard over you. The betel nuts and the bowls of oranges, apples, and coconuts. The sandalwood incense. The ancient incantations of the priest, now pouring ghee into a bowl. The sacred fire burning at their feet. The expectant faces of all the lovely women in the audience, sharp-tongued aunties in embroidered sarees. The silly, sweet nonsense uncles, Avi’s father’s friends. The communal pride. The coming feast, with buttery spinach and tandoori kabobs.

He was saying their wedding conjured every Bollywood movie ever made, every Indian story ever told. And her husband-to-be was right. Every year, millions of people married this way and went on to have fulfilling relationships and meaningful lives. Or anyway, one had to assume they were fulfilling.

She and Avi hadn’t spoken in days, though she had almost called him that morning. Waking up alone in the nondescript hotel, like any of the hundreds of interchangeable rooms she’d passed through for work, had been disorienting. She nearly headed to the gym to run on the treadmill, her habit before board presentations. But this was no business trip. She decided not to call him because she didn’t know yet if Avi consoled well, or if talking to him would make her more nervous. Instead, she made herself coffee in the room. She convinced herself that arranged marriage wasn’t strange. After all, could any woman say, years later, that on her wedding day she’d really known the man she was marrying?

“This debut novel looks at a contemporary couple of Indian background who opt for an arranged marriage. Meena and Avi go in with eyes open and settle in small town Ohio with the intention of making their relationship work. Varun Gauri narrates the story from both points of view with compassion and skill. Despite shared values and caring natures, the couple must navigate the stranglehold of family as well as familial judgment. Plenty of other misunderstandings and conflicts crop up to challenge their decision to marry. Gauri proves himself to be a wonderful storyteller.”

– Martha Toll, NPR 2024 Books We Love Selection

“This novel has everything – gorgeous writing, a pacy plot, irreverent satire, lovable characters, and moments of devastating heartache. At the same time, Varun Gauri may be the wisest, most psychologically insightful of recent Indian American writers. You will understand marriage, romance, and diaspora culture from an entirely new perspective. This is a brilliant, hilarious, and wonderfully intimate first novel.”

– Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life, winner of the Folio Prize and International Dublin Literary Award

“Gauri’s vibrant characters steal the spotlight in this thoughtful debut . . . This is an often funny and thought-provoking tale on the nature of love and long-term relationships in a world that glorifies individualism.”

– Publishers’ Weekly Booklife

“Set in small-town America, Gauri offers a poignant, witty look at the complexities of marriage and cultural identity amidst political and personal challenges.”

– Princeton Alumni Weekly

“The portrait of [the protagonists’]  growing awareness of what they really want and how little they understood it, makes For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus, fundamentally, a psychological novel. It is Avi’s and Meena’s growing self-knowledge that moves the plot and that makes, at last, for an ambiguous though possibly better marriage.”

– Eve Ottenberg, Washington City Paper

“‘Economist’ and ‘award-winning novelist’ are not usually descriptors used for the same person, but Varun Gauri is an exception to that rule.”

– US1