INTRODUCING A DAZZLING NEW LITERARY VOICE In two-time O. Henry-prize winner Swamy's debut collection of stories dreams collide with reality modernity collides with antiquity myth with true identity and women grapple with desire with ego with motherhood and mortality. In Earthly Pleasures Radika a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romancINTRODUCING A DAZZLING NEW LITERARY VOICE In two-time O. Henry-prize winner Swamy's debut collection of stories dreams collide with reality modernity collides with antiquity myth with true identity and women grapple with desire with ego with motherhood and mortality. In Earthly Pleasures Radika a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of India's biggest celebrities. In A Simple Composition a husband's moment of crisis leads to his wife's discovery of a dark ecstatic joy and the sense of a new beginning. In the title story an exhausted mother watches distracted and paralyzed as a California wildfire approaches her home. With a knife blade's edge and precision the stories of A House Is a Body travel from India to America and back again to reveal the small moments of beauty pain and power that contain the world.(less)