Happy
(2023)

Fiction

Book

Call Numbers:
NEW FICTION/BALJEET BASRA,C

0 Holds on 1 Copy

Availability

Locations Call Number Status
New & Popular Fiction NEW FICTION/BALJEET BASRA,C Due: 4/27/2024

Details

PUBLISHED
New York : Astra House, [2023]
EDITION
First edition
DESCRIPTION

262 pages : black and white illustrations ; 22 cm

ISBN/ISSN
9781662602306, 1662602308 :, 1662602308, 9781662602306
LANGUAGE
English
NOTES

"In a rural village of Punjab, India, a moony young man crouches over his phone in a rapeseed field near his family's cabbage farm. His name is Happy Singh Soni, and he's watching YouTube clips of his favorite film, Bandẻ Part by Jean-Luc Godard. In fact, Happy is often compared to a young Sami Frey by the imaginary journalists that keep him company while he uses the outhouse. Pooing, as he says, "en plein air." When he's not sleeping among the cabbages and eating his mother's sugary rotis, Happy dreams of becoming an actor, one who plays the melancholy roles--sad, pretty boys, rare in Indian cinema. There are macho leads and funny boys en masse, but if you're looking for depth and vulnerability, you must make your own heroes. Then comes Wonderland, an eccentric facsimile of Disneyland that steadily buys up the local farms, rebranding the community's traditional way of life. Happy works a dead-end job at the amusement park, biding his time and saving money for a clandestine journey to Europe, where he'll finally land a breakout role. Little does he know that his immigration is being coordinated by a transnational crime syndicate. After a nightmarish passage to Italy, Happy still manages to find relief in food and fantasy, even as he is forced into ever-worsening work conditions over a debt he allegedly accrued in transit. But his daydreams grow increasingly at odds with his bleak reality, one shared by so many migrant workers disenfranchised by the systems that depend on their labor" --