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A fresh, propulsive first novel about fortune and survival, as a savvy former Mumbai street child longs for redemption and a chance to live life on her own terms.
In this transporting debut novel, a former Mumbai street kid's quest for redemption is bound up with the grand plans of a big-shot human rights lawyer, a Harvard-bound intern with a saviour complex, and a fading Bollywood starlet looking for a comeback.
Rakhi is an office assistant at a struggling human rights law office run by the renowned lawyer who offered her a fresh start. Fiercely intelligent and in possession of a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue, Rakhi is nobody's fool, even if she is underestimated by everyone around her. Yet as she tries to make the most of her new life as an officewali, she remains haunted by guilt for her role in the incident that led her to lose her best friend eleven years ago.
Rakhi's quiet life is overturned when Alex, a Canadian intern, starts working at the office. Disarming, naive, and overly entitled, Alex persuades Rakhi to show him "the real India" in a transaction that, at first, seems harmless. And when a Bollywood actress presents herself as the solution to the office's financial problems, things grow increasingly complicated. As Rakhi struggles to keep her many secrets safe, she will be forced to question everything she once knew to be true. And as the stakes mount, she will come face to face with the difficult choices and moral compromises that people are prepared to make in order to survive, no matter the costs.
REEMA PATEL holds a B.A. from McGill University and a J.D. from the University of Windsor. After working in Mumbai in the youth non-profit sector and in human rights advocacy, she has spent the last ten years working in provincial and municipal government. Such Big Dreams is her first novel, and an excerpt from the novel won the Penguin Random House Student Award for Fiction at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies. She lives in Toronto, where she currently works as a lawyer for the City of Toronto.
In this transporting debut novel, a former Mumbai street kid's quest for redemption is bound up with the grand plans of a big-shot human rights lawyer, a Harvard-bound intern with a saviour complex, and a fading Bollywood starlet looking for a comeback.
Rakhi is an office assistant at a struggling human rights law office run by the renowned lawyer who offered her a fresh start. Fiercely intelligent and in possession of a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue, Rakhi is nobody's fool, even if she is underestimated by everyone around her. Yet as she tries to make the most of her new life as an officewali, she remains haunted by guilt for her role in the incident that led her to lose her best friend eleven years ago.
Rakhi's quiet life is overturned when Alex, a Canadian intern, starts working at the office. Disarming, naive, and overly entitled, Alex persuades Rakhi to show him "the real India" in a transaction that, at first, seems harmless. And when a Bollywood actress presents herself as the solution to the office's financial problems, things grow increasingly complicated. As Rakhi struggles to keep her many secrets safe, she will be forced to question everything she once knew to be true. And as the stakes mount, she will come face to face with the difficult choices and moral compromises that people are prepared to make in order to survive, no matter the costs.
REEMA PATEL holds a B.A. from McGill University and a J.D. from the University of Windsor. After working in Mumbai in the youth non-profit sector and in human rights advocacy, she has spent the last ten years working in provincial and municipal government. Such Big Dreams is her first novel, and an excerpt from the novel won the Penguin Random House Student Award for Fiction at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Studies. She lives in Toronto, where she currently works as a lawyer for the City of Toronto.
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- SeriesSuch Big Dreams