Books
Crawling at Night
Hailed by The New York Times as a “formidable young writer … one who unpacks her characters’ emotions with a firm, graceful hand,” Nani Power garnered impressive acclaim for her profound debut last year. A darkly lyrical, charged exploration of the double-edged sword of urban anonymity, her novel was deemed “daring” and “one-of-a-kind” by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Crawling at Night is a searing, unforgettable portrait of New York City and of the appetites and self-sabotaging patterns of its displaced inhabitants. Ito is a literate yet tongue-tied sushi chef who recites haiku in his head as he labors over shopping lists, which at once define and confine him. Alone, he dreams of Mariane, a lost alcoholic waitress who works with him at the Chelsea sushi bar. Ito can’t help but live part of every waking day reliving the tragedy he left behind in Japan, and across town Mariane yearns for the baby girl she abandoned almost fifteen years before.
In the spinning haze of two nights in Manhattan, Ito and Mariane find themselves careening on a downward spiral through the dark streets of the city. As they navigate a sea of alcohol, sex, and exotic food, we are taken inside the minds of other scarred people they encounter, whose paths, like the streets of the city itself, crisscross and overlap, skimming one another for some sort of connection.
Crawling at Night is a dazzling evocation of the way people draw each other in to absorb the shock of loneliness, and how they then either drift out of orbit or are pushed away. With heartbreaking intimacy, Power shows that the dark side of the city and its struggling inhabitants is but an extension of the purest longings and intentions of those very same, very human people.
“…profound and thrilling … Crawling at Night will not only be a sensation of the season, it will also endure.” — Robert Olen Butler
“A formidable young writer … one who can put you in mind of both Mary Gaitskill and Denis Johnson.” — Dwight Garner, the New York Times Book Review
“… an effective exploration of the lies we tell ourselves to help us handle the business of living.” — Jabari Asim, Washington Post Book World
“[Power] has an astonishing talent … deeply affecting….” – Bookforum
Ginger and Ganesh
Adventures in Indian Cooking, Culture and Love
“Please teach me Indian cooking! I will bring ingredients and pay you for your
trouble. I would like to know about your culture as well.”
And with this posting on Craigslist, so begins Nani Power’s journey to learn
traditional Indian cooking in the most ancient of ways — woman to woman.
Welcomed warmly into the homes of strangers, Power meets women of all ages and
backgrounds, and from them learns the skills that were passed on to them from
their own mothers. Power takes the reader into a culture, a cuisine, and the female
psyche, with recipes and stories from each chapter revealing the struggle of modern
women, both American and of Indian descent, searching for identity and a definition
of what it means to be a woman today.
The recipes shared in this collection are far from ordinary; they are treasured family
recipes from vegetarian homes in India — from homemade cheese cubes in a rich
cilantro and almond curry to coconut-stuffed okra and luscious potato-curry
dumplings. Power’s recipes and stories pave the road to understanding a culture
that is at the same time ancient and so very much part of our modern world.
Feed the Hungry
A Memoir with Recipes
An author whose fiction has been praised by Mary Gaitskill (“Passionate, intelligent,
and piercingly beautiful. ..an altogether striking debut”) and Darcy Steinke (“Nani
Power…shows that sensuality pervades all of life and is too powerful to be contained
in the bedroom alone”), Nani Power turns her incredible storytelling talents to
memoir, crafting a sublime work of nonfiction centered around a life of travel,
eclectic dining, and dealing with her decidedly eccentric Southern bohemian family.
Consumption is the real American pastime. Through the prism of food, we all see our
pasts differently. Like the finest food writers, Power brings readers directly into her
world through the evocative depiction of the experience of eating. From her
childhood on a rambling farm in Virginia — during which she witnessed a saga of
fighting, disowning, silencing, and other regrettable acts — to her peripatetic and
international adult life, Power’s reflections are surprising, enthralling, and
entertaining. She has a deep understanding of the cuisines of Peru and Mexico, Iran
and India; her stints as a sandwich seller in Rio, a waitress in the East Village, a
funeral caterer in the Deep South, and on a food junket to Japan all seem familiar as
she relates each experience to us through its cuisine. A wealth of detailed recipes
throughout the book offer a chance to recreate Power’s memories in perpetuity.
Lyrical and uplifting, unflinching and brave, Feed the Hungry is a supple, evocative
memoir of food, travel, Americana, and family history, written with all the creativity,
tenderness, grit, and verve we have come to expect from this uncommonly gifted
writer.
Sea of Tears
A Novel
“This is all about love,” begins The Sea of Tears , a story that is infused with the
sensuality and smarts that have established Nani Power as one of our most
compelling writers. This otherworldly novel delves into the tangled relationships and
hidden world of people brought together—and torn apart—under extraordinary
Jedra has fled his native Iraq and is working in the boiler room at the Royale Hotel,
where he pines for Phyllis, the front–desk clerk who mysteriously remembers
heaven. Khouri, an Iranian engineer, attends a business conference at the Royale,
where he meets Patricia, a single mother and hotel maid, and finds himself wanting
in ways he never has before. And in the penthouse apartment, young loner Daniel
cannot escape his memories of Brazil, and only makes contact with the outside
world through room service delivery. That is, until the hotel chef, Leslie Downing,
comes knocking on his door.
Harking back to The Arabian Nights and the poetry of Rumi, but with a decidedly
modern eye toward the clashing and mingling of cultures, the result is a
mesmerizing invitation to take seriously the desires of one’s heart.
The Good Remains
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Nani Power’s The Good Remains is an
enchanting tribute to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol that follows a beguiling cast of
characters in a small Virginia town heavy with history. Dr. C. R. Ash is a neonatologist
and chronic bachelor, the last in line to an old Southern family name. During a
snowy prelude to a much-anticipated hospital Christmas party, C.R. crosses paths
with a world of local characters, living and dead: from Betty, his fire-fearing secretary;
to C.R’s lascivious best friend, who mends the hearts of babies; to Kirsten, a candy
striper who teeters between the worlds of childhood and child rearing; to a clutch of
death-obsessed teenagers; to two amateur caterers striving to create a Dickensian
world of magic for the overworked and bedraggled hospital staff. In a town adrift
with housing developments, strip malls, and Civil War history, this motley
assemblage are all impelled by their search to solve the ancient human riddles of
love, loss, and desolation.