Esmé Weijun Wang + Ranbir Singh Sidhu

DIESEL, A Bookstore in Oakland welcomes Esmé Weijun Wang and Ranbir Singh Sidhu to the store to discuss and compare their two debut novels, The Border of Paradise and Deep Singh Blue, on Sunday, April 24th at 3:00pm.

Esmé Weijun Wang’s remarkable multigenerational novel, The Border of Paradise, transports readers into the world of an iconoclastic midcentury family. In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak’s only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David’s life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame: the beautiful, sharp-tongued Daisy. Returning to the United States, the couple (and newborn son) buy an isolated country house in Northern California’s Polk Valley. As David’s mental health deteriorates, he has a brief affair with Marianne, producing a daughter. When Marianne appears at their doorstep, the couple’s fateful decision to take the child as their own determines a tragic course of events for the entire family. Told from multiple perspectives, The Border of Paradise culminates in heartrending fashion, as the young heirs to the Nowak fortune must confront their past and the tragic reality of their future.

Ranbir Singh Sidhu’s debut takes us into the heart of another America, and into the lives of the other Indians, the ones who don’t get talked about and whose stories don’t get written. With a sharp, funny and unsentimental eye, Sidhu chronicles the devastating consequences of racism in eighties America and offers a portrait of a wildly dysfunctional family trying to gain a foothold in their adopted country. Deep Singh wants out out of his family, out of his city, and more than anything, out of his life. His parents argue over everything and his brother, who hasn’t said a single word in over a year, suddenly turns to him one day and tells him to die. So when Lily, a beautiful, older, and married, woman, shows him more than a flicker of attention, he falls heedlessly in love. It doesn’t help that Lily is an alcoholic, hates her husband, and doesn’t think much of herself, or her immigrant Chinese mom either. As Deep’s growing obsession with Lily begins to spin out of control, the rest of his life seems to mirror his desperation, culminating in his brother’s disappearance and an unfolding tragedy.

Esmé Weijun Wang is an award-winning mental health advocate and speaker, as well as a journalist and essayist. The Border of Paradise is her first novel. She lives in San Francisco.

Ranbir Singh Sidhu is the author of the story collection Good Indian Girls and is a winner of a Pushcart Prize and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Deep Singh Blue is his first novel. He divides his time between the US, India, and Greece.