Now out in paperback
“Dizzyingly original, fiercely funny, deeply wise.”
One of The Washington Post‘s 10 Best Books of 2021 * Chosen as a Best Book of 2021 by NPR, Electric Literature, Amazon Editors, and more * A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice * A Good Morning America Buzz Pick * Long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize * Winner of Georgia’s 2023 Townsend Prize for Fiction
How far would you go for a piece of the American dream?
A magical realist coming-of-age story, Gold Diggers skewers the model minority myth to tell a hilarious and moving story about immigrant identity, community, and the underside of ambition.
A floundering second-generation teenager growing up in the Bush-era Atlanta suburbs, Neil Narayan struggles to bear the weight of expectations of his family and their Asian American enclave. He tries to want their version of success, but mostly, Neil just wants his neighbor across the cul-de-sac, Anita Dayal.
When he discovers that Anita is the beneficiary of an ancient, alchemical potion made from stolen gold—a “lemonade” that harnesses the ambition of the gold’s original owner—Neil sees his chance to get ahead. But events spiral into a tragedy that rips their community apart. Years later in the Bay Area, Neil still bristles against his community’s expectations—and finds he might need one more hit of that lemonade, no matter the cost.
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PRAISE
“Sanjena Sathian’s Gold Diggers is a work of 24-karat genius…remarkable…Sathian’s effervescent social satire breaks the bonds of ordinary reality and rises to another level...Looking up from the pages of this sparkling debut, I experienced something like the thrill the luckiest 49ers must have felt: Gold! Gold! Gold!”
“Deftly weaves together magic and history to produce a compelling coming-of-age story.”
“A pacy plot and a protagonist you feel for... a delightful concoction of the best of South Asia’s literary offerings, reminiscent of Hanif Kureishi’s irreverent humour in The Buddha of Suburbia and, more recently, the magic realism of Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West and Salman Rushdie’s work. Despite these locatable lineages, Sathian has forged a narrative path entirely her own... Sathian brings a golden touch to the 21st-century Indian American novel.”
“[A]chingly real reminders of what it was like to be an adolescent in post-9/11 America, feeling the weight of your parents’ dreams on your shoulders… exquisite prose humming with contagious anxiety.”
““Sathian’s satire is pitch perfect . . . savagely funny. The comedic grotesque register gives way, at times, to an authentic and heartrending melancholia . . . [M]agnificent—canny and moving and just plain fun . . . Sathian’s movement toward fantasy in the story’s second half is a wise, satisfying turn. Her prose lifts off: there’s a delight she takes in writing humorously about magic that shows off the scope of her immense talent . . . [a] firm critique of secondhand striving and cutthroat ambition.” ”
“Full of voice… rollicking, at times painful, and ultimately intensely satisfying…One of the wonderful things about Sathian’s writing is how imperfect she allows Neil to be: he can be shallow, vain, awkward, and selfish. Yet it’s so easy to root for him, because he’s just so terribly alive, his adult narration inhabiting his teenage self honestly, without sugarcoating.”
“This terrific debut novel uses heists and alchemy to deconstruct immigrant ambition, striving, and sin… The project of Gold Diggers is to deconstruct [the dream of America]. But what makes the novel so compelling is the playfulness with which Sathian deconstructs it.You feel for the characters and the ways they have been warped by their pursuit of greatness and the ways they are haunted by their sins—but also, there are heists and alchemy. It’s a blast.”
“Crackles with sarcasm and wit…a dazzling tale. Local readers will delight in Sathian’s artful depiction of metro Atlanta circa 2006, as well as her take on the struggles of being a member of a minority community during the post-9/11 Bush era.”
“A dazzling and delightful work of fiction by an exciting new literary talent... Sathian has produced a beguiling elixir with Gold Diggers, skillfully stirring myth into a playful yet powerful modern-day examination of the American dream and the second-generation citizens who pursue it. A fabulist amalgam of The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye, it’s an engrossing cautionary tale as well as a shrewd appraisal of what we consider success—and the moral sacrifices we make to achieve it. Imaginative and intoxicating, Gold Diggers richly rewards its readers.”
“Out of this nugget of magical realism, Sathian spins pure magic... Filled with pathos, humor, slices of American history, and an adrenaline-pumping heist, Sathian’s spectacular debut also highlights the steep costs of the all-American dream... Pure gold.”
“A refreshing tweak of the assimilation novel… Sathian artfully and convincingly conjures [this] world... Sathian has a knack for page-turner prose, but the story has plenty of heft. A winningly revamped King Midas tale.”
“In a perfect alchemical blend of familiar and un-, Gold Diggers takes a wincingly hilarious coming-of-age story, laces it with magical realism and a trace of satire, and creates a world that’s both achingly familiar and marvelously inventive. Written with such assurance it’s hard to believe it’s Sanjena Sathian’s debut, this is a dizzyingly original, fiercely funny, deeply wise novel about the seductive powers—and dangers—of borrowed ambition.”
“Completely original, utterly absorbing, complex and confident... A bravura performance from an exciting new voice. ”
“A dynamic and exciting debut... A total delight!”
“Vivid, delightful, and wonderfully weird... Sanjena Sathian is an incredibly exciting new writer!”
“Sanjena Sathian’s GOLD DIGGERS is a sparkling treasure, hilarious and full of insight.”
“A perfect first novel: brilliant, funny, and secretly, privately, quietly romantic. A Great American Novel for the 21st century.”
“An auspicious—auriferous?—debut. Part coming-of-age story about the immigrant experience, part Gogolian heist comedy about soul-sapping gold, it’s also a timely satire of greed, status anxiety, Ivy striving, and the long nightmare of the American dream... an enviably smart and ambitious critique of envy, smarts, and ambition.”
“A tenderly imaginative tale of ambition and the burden of tradition, GOLD DIGGERS is the American novel we need right now. Bracingly original, riveting to the last drop.”
“Sanjena Sathian’s expansive debut novel upends our ideas of what it takes to make it in America. Smart, funny, and completely engrossing, GOLD DIGGERS is everything a novel should be.
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“GOLD DIGGERS is a knock-out — a hilarious send-up of the immigrant pressure to succeed and the challenges of growing up with a hyphenated identity in the American South. It’s also a devastating meditation on history, love, grief, wealth, and familial bonds. ”
“GOLD DIGGERS is so many things—truly funny, insightful, smart, and filled with wonderful characters. I loved reading this novel.”
“...made me feel utterly inadequate as a writer...We’ll be hearing from her for years to come.”
Want to donate a copy of GOLD DIGGERS?
If so, thank you!!! Please consider reaching out to your local public library or one of the following organizations that cater to underserved readers.
Eastwind Books Multicultural Services (Berkeley, CA)
Books for Africa (dropoffs in both Marietta, GA and St. Paul, MN)
Any number of prison libraries