An epic campus novel about the hopes and hypocrisies of 21st-century higher education, from one of Canada's most celebrated literary novelists.
Devi is a Sri Lankan village girl who dreams of going to Harvard. Katrina is a middle-class American girl whose life has been designed to get her into an elite liberal arts college. Devi's father cleans toilets in a five-star hotel to pay for his daughter's Indian tutor, who might not be the Oxford student he claims to be on WhatsApp. Katrina's father teaches extra courses at a mediocre technical university to pay for his daughter's academic lifestyle experiences. Meanwhile, his tech-bro TA expertly extorts money from international students worried about flunking and getting deported.
Set between contemporary Sri Lanka and the United States, Lords of Serendipity is a wry, moving, and sharply observed story about how rich and poor alike try to get ahead by going to university. It's about dreams and ambition meeting corruption and hypocrisy. It's about what parents are willing to do for their children, and about what strivers and hustlers are willing to do when they meet gatekeepers.
This is the 21st-century global campus novel, a story about two teenage girls from opposite sides of the world with the same dream: four years in a quadrangle-shaped paradise that offers lots of super amazing courses and super amazing protests. The novel couldn't be more timely in this absurd and perilous-feeling moment for both American life and higher education.
"Sharmila Devar narrates the intertwined stories of two teenage girls who are pursuing admission to elite universities. Using accents and pacing, she helps listeners keep track of Devi from Sri Lanka, whose father makes sacrifices for her education, and Katrina in the United States, whose family invests heavily in her academic ambitions. Devar gives each storyline a distinct presence, differentiating between the girls' countries, families, and social settings. She brings a wry edge to life on the Ivy League college campus at the heart of this story. Her characterizations help ground listeners in the sea of other characters surrounding Devi and Katrina.
Devar unfolds a hilarious satire on ambition, family expectations, and university life."
