Waiting for Jonathan Koshy

by Murzban F. Shroff

From the author of Breathless in Bombay and Third Eye Rising comes an intensely engaging novel about life, family, friendship, and duty. In the heart of Pali Hill, the Beverly Hills of Mumbai, four friends await the arrival of Jonathan, a man “greatly appreciated for his wit, his effervescence, and his indig- nation,” a man exiled from his home state. Through their conversations, we learn of the tumultuous life of Jonathan—how he single-handedly breaks up a gambling den, disarms a rioting mob, charms a recovery agent, evades arrest at a drug-ridden rave party, and brightens up the lives of sex workers and their children. Jonathan has a solution for every crisis that strikes others, but not for his own dysfunctional family life. It is left to life then to resolve matters for him. Drawing on the terse intensity of a play, the sparkling wit of a stand-up comedy, and the insights of a thought-provoking novel, Waiting for Jonathan Koshy reflects the triumph of a spirit that refuses to let up on humor and quick thinking in the face of intense personal adversity. It is a book about friendship, perseverance, family obligations, and duty. Most importantly, about life’s late but redeeming powers.

Praise

“What a delicious irony sits at the heart of Murzban F. Shroff’s Waiting for Jonathan Koshy: the central character is almost larger than life, having done the things we all might dream of doing to serve others in desperate situations; but in his own life, for his own welfare, he is, in many ways powerless. By magnifying the heroic, Shroff unflinchingly portrays our human vulnerability. Waiting for Jonathan Koshy is a fascinating reading experience from a deeply skilled writer.”—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize Winner.

“Waiting for Jonathan Koshy is a splendid portrait of its quixotically hard-hustling hero. Murzban Shroff’s kaleidoscopic image of Koshy’s passage through the complications of his journey offers a remarkably frank and revealing view of twenty-first century Indian life.”Madison Smartt Bell, National Book Award Finalist.

Author Bio

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Murzban F. Shroff
Murzban F. Shroff

Murzban F. Shroff is a Mumbai-based writer. He has published his fiction with over 65 literary journals in the U.S. and UK. His stories have appeared in journals like The Gettysburg Review, The Minnesota Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Chicago Tribune, and World Literature Today. His non-fiction has appeared in India Abroad, The New Engagement, and The American Scholar. Shroff is the winner of the John Gilgun Fiction Award and has garnered six Pushcart Prize nominations, the highest award for the short story in the U.S. His short story collection, Breathless in Bombay, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in the best debut category from Europe and South Asia, and rated by the Guardian as among the ten best Mumbai books. His novel, Waiting for Jonathan Koshy, was a finalist for the Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize and has been published in India and China. His third book, Fasttrack Fiction, serves up a collection of literary nuggets for the digital reader. Shroff represented Mumbai at the London Short Story Festival (2015), the Irrawaddy Literary Festival in Myanmar (2017 and 2109), and the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai (2019). He was invited to speak about his work at the Gandhi Memorial Center in Bethesda, the University of California Los Angeles, California State University Monterey Bay, the Institute for South Asia Studies at UC Berkeley, and the Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism at the University of Southern California. Shroff’s fourth book, Third Eye Rising, was published in January 2021 in the United States and Europe. Astrophil Press will publish Shroff’s novel, Waiting for Jonathan Koshy, in Spring/Summer 2022.