Ticket to Minto
Winner of the 2001 Iowa Short Fiction Award
“Reading Ticket to Minto was an emotional and intellectual joyride I did not want to end. Here is a writer who leaps headlong into the creative furnace—daring, energetic, fresh! This collection of stories will haunt me for years to come.”—Susan Power
“A subtle understanding of human nature, clarity, and intelligence inform this splendid collection. Sohrab Fracis's accurate eye for sensual detail is as evocative of the sights, sounds, and smells of India as it is of the lonelier landscapes of his domicile in America. An original voice stamped with veracity.”—Bapsi Sidhwa, author of The Crow Eaters and Cracking India
“Fracis‘s writing is brutally honest, exposing sinew and nerves and getting at the heart of the matter.”—India Currents
Ticket to Minto, Sohrab Homi Fracis's premier fiction collection, offers readers a passage to an unfamiliar destination-a world suspended between East and West, India and America, home and away.
With piercing insight, Fracis expertly reveals the underlying differences between immersion in India's culture-Hindu, Muslim, or Parsi-and life as an Indian in America. Alternating between East and West, the stories in Ticket to Minto serve as companion pieces, interrelated across continents in both theme and content. A middle-aged man's search for love in Bombay is contrasted with an Indian American family's hopes for the marriage of their westernized daughter. A university student rushes to save the life of a servant in his homeland only to find his own life threatened while attending graduate school in America.
Poignant and daring, Ticket to Minto underlines the harsh realization that the immigrant never truly arrives but is in constant limbo between two worlds. As one character relates, "There's a part of me that's American and a part that's Indian. I'm clear about that and comfortable with it, except that sometimes people want me to be just the one or the other."
Contents
Ancient Fire
Stray
Falling
Rabbit’s Foot
Flora Fountain
Holy Cow
Matters of Balance
Hamid Gets His Hair Cut
Ticket to Minto
Who’s Your Authority?
Keeping Time
The Mark Twain Overlook