Kamlani’s debut novel explores the British perception of India and the Indian perception of Britain through the story of a man who straddles both cultures but is fully at home in neither.

Set against the backdrop of the Indian independence movement, Shiv Advani is an 18-year-old growing up in India, but he is no ordinary young man. Personally chosen by Mahatma Gandhi, Shiv is tasked with traveling to England to master its laws and return home to help liberate India from British rule. Yet Shiv is a man caught between worlds: India and England, law and activism, gay and straight, duty and desire.

Beena Kamlani discusses how the Library’s collections shaped The English Problem; a story of colonialism and love that transcends racial, gender, and economic barriers.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Beena Kamlani is a Pushcart Prize-winning fiction writer whose work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review; Ploughshares; Identity Lessons: Learning to Be American, eds. Gillan (1999); Growing Up Ethnic in America, eds. Gillan (2000); The Lifted Brow (2008); World Literature Today; and other publications. She has been awarded fellowships at Yaddo, MacDowell, Ledig House/Writers Omi, Hawthornden Castle, Jentel Arts, and Hedgebrook. A former senior editor for the Penguin Group, she taught book editing at New York University for nearly two decades and was presented an award for teaching excellence. The English Problem is her first novel.

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Beena Kamlani © Dan Demetriad