Nalini Jones In Conversation With Elissa Schappell

A stunning debut novel set in a Mumbai fishing village that follows the friendship between a young girl struggling to find her place in the world and an aging historian reckoning with his past, The Unbroken Coast is a "heartwarming and lively story wrapped up in an ode to one of the world’s most vibrant cities" (Booklist).

ABOUT THE UNBROKEN COAST

​On the night his granddaughter is born in America, Professor Francis Almeida rides a bicycle through his quiet Catholic neighborhood in a suburb of Mumbai. It is 1978. He has recently retired, his grown children are scattered across the globe, and for the first time in decades, he is not sure what he should do next. A few streets from his home, in the heart of a Koli fishing village, he encounters a young mother praying for her baby daughter, ill with dengue fever, at the shrine of Our Lady of Navigators. He hopes the child will live.

Nearly a decade later, Francis meets the child again. She is Celia, daughter of a fisherman who is running from a debt collector. When an accident brings their families together, both Celia and Francis find themselves with unexpected new allies.

Spanning the turbulent years when Bombay became Mumbai, at time when environmental and economic pressures are just beginning to change the fortunes of indigenous fisherfolk, The Unbroken Coast is a lyrical novel that explores memory, faith, storytelling, and the nature of home

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Nalini Jones is the author of The Unbroken Coast and a story collection, What You Call Winter. The novel was supported by a National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship, and her short fiction has been awarded O. Henry and Pushcart prizes. Her work has appeared in publications such as One Story, Ploughshares, LitHub, Guernica, Elle India, and The New York Times, and she has contributed nonfiction to anthologies about politics, jazz, travel, and families, including those affected by HIV in AIDS Sutra.

Elissa Schappell is the author of two books of fiction, Blueprints for Building Better Girls, and Use Me, a New York Times Notable book, a Los Angeles Times “Best Book of the Year”, and a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award. In addition to being a journalist, essayist, and book reviewer, she was a co-founder and Editor-at-Large of Tin House. She’s taught in the MFA Creative Writing programs at Columbia and NYU and now teaches a workshop in Catskill.

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