Best Books of 2018 Kirkus Reviews (debut and short fiction categories)Best Books of 2018, Entropy Magazine
A Book Club selection for The Wing, Rebel Women's Lit and Bookish.com
35 over 35 Debut Fiction Award
Finalist for the 2019 PEN American Robert Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection
"Chaya Bhuvaneswar's debut collection maps with great assurance the intricate outer reaches of the human heart. What a bold, smart, exciting new voice, well worth listening to; what an elegant story collection to read and savor."
-Lauren Groff, author of Florida
"Stunning, evocative, electric...an exuberant collection."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred)
A woman grieves a miscarriage, haunted by the Buddha's birth. An artist with schizophrenia tries to survive hatred and indifference in small-town India by turning to the beauty of sculpture and dance. Orphans in India get pulled into a strange "rescue" mission aimed at stripping their mysterious powers. A brief but intense affair between two women culminates in regret and betrayal. A boy seeks memories of his sister in the legend of a woman who weds death. And fragments of history, from child brickmakers to slaves in Renaissance Portugal, are held up in brief fictions, burnished, made dazzling and unforgettable.
In seventeen remarkable stories, Chaya Bhuvaneswar spotlights diverse women of color-cunning, bold, and resolute-facing sexual harassment and racial violence, and occasionally inflicting that violence on each other. Winner of the 2017 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize,
White Dancing Elephants marks the emergence of a new and original voice in fiction and explores feminist, queer, religious, and immigrant stories with precision, drama, and compassion.
Industry Reviews
"A magnificent collection of stories that defy conventions, stereotypes, and reveal the universal complexity we all share as humans--gifted and flawed individuals, who struggle to reconcile the mixed signals of our own hearts."
--Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet "Filled with dark music, nuance, and intelligence, White Dancing Elephants takes readers on a thrilling journey. In sharp takes, Chaya Bhuvaneswar unfolds the complexities of race and gender, tragedy and eros. This unforgettable collection will hold its readers captive to the very last page."
-Diana Abu-Jaber, PEN/Hemingway-winning author of Life Without a Recipe and Crescent
"The stories in White Dancing Elephants show impressive dexterity and range.The prose can be rich and intricate one moment, then shifts registers into sharp humor; the characterization is many-dimensional; Bhuvaneswar's ability to take on larger topics, such as Bhopal, and to locate and intensify their complexity within individuals is amazingly fine."
- Peter Rock, Alex-award winning author of My Abandonment
"Chaya Bhuvaneswar's deft and poignant stories bring the whole damned world into clearer focus. A pure pleasure to read, White Dancing Elephants is a remarkable book that will stay with me for a long time."
--Skip Horack, Breadloaf/Bakeless Prize-winning author of The Other Joseph and The Southern Cross
"Chaya Bhuvaneswar's stories reveal a rare sensitivity to the strange and complicated acrobatics of the human heart. These are astonishing, urgent portraits of people trying to see the world for what it is and what it might be."
--Emily Geminder, author of Dead Girls and Other Stories
"White Dancing Elephants dazzles from the start. There are so many wonderful stories in this collection that center on female characters of color in all sorts of situations. Readers are treated to deep characters, mesmerizing language, and a story that propels forward across a city and the landscape of a mind effortlessly. This is a new gifted voice in contemporary literature and we are so lucky to have it!"
--Victoria Chang, American Book Award-winning author of Barbie Chang
"Bhuvaneswar's stories are as insightful as they are ineffable and as devastating as they are delightful. As I read these important and hilarious tales about the lives of queer people of color, I kept asking myself, 'You can do this in writing?'"
--Emma Eisenberg, GLAAD-nominated journalist and author of The Third Rainbow Girl
