This Is Salvaged : Stories

“A daring and original voice, trembling with power and anger and vulnerability.” – Namita Gokhale “It takes tremendous courage and wit to look with wonder at the darkest, most shameful places in the human heart and make them hilarious, tender, and deeply moving; Vauhini Vara … can do this magic with astonishing ease.” – Lauren Groff In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This Is Salvaged search fervently for meaning through one another: A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor who is descending into dementia… A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators… One sister consumes the ashes of another… And, in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible’s specifications… In stories that are wise and funny, beautiful and strange, Vauhini Vara-author of the award-winning The Immortal King Rao, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize-writes with compassion, but without sentimentality, about loss and longing and attempting to find hope in the midst of grief.