This week on The Write Question, host Lauren Korn speaks with novelist Shobha Rao, author of Indian Country (Crown Publishing Group), the story of Sagar and Janavi, newlyweds forced together in an arranged marriage.
Their story begins in Varanasi, India, but after Sagar accepts a job in America, in Montana, hired to engineer the removal of the dam on a fictionalized Tongue River (here the Cotton River), the couple find themselves at the center of an unfolding crime story—one that begins centuries ago, along the Cotton River in Montana, and along the Ganga, or the Ganges, in India. When a colleague of Sagar’s drowns, Sagar becomes the scapegoat, one in a long history of people of color paying the price for settler-colonial arrogance and expansionism.
Note: This conversation has been edited for time.
About Shobha:
Shobha Rao moved to the United States from India at the age of seven. She is the author of An Unrestored Woman, a short story collection, and the novels Indian Country and Girls Burn Brighter. Rao is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and was a Grace Paley Teaching Fellow at The New School. Her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in Best American Short Stories. Girls Burn Brighter was long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the California Book Award and the Goodreads Choice Awards. She lives in San Francisco.
Shobha will be appearing in Montana!:
- in Bozeman at Country Bookshelf on November 17th (with Shane Doyle);
- in Hamilton at Chapter One Bookstore on November 19; and
- in Missoula at Fact & Fiction Books on November 20, 2025.
Mentioned in this episode:
Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder (HarperCollins)
Shobha Rao recommends:
2666 by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Picador)
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes (New Directions)
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Keith Gessen (Dalkey Archive Press)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Penguin Random House)
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls (New Directions)
Lauren Korn recommends:
Indian Country by Shobha Rao (Crown Publishing Group)
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (Alfred A. Knopf)
2666 by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Picador)
Transplants by Daniel Tam-Claiborne (Regalo Press); listen to Lauren’s conversation with Daniel here!
Seeking Fortune Elsewhere by Sindya Bhanoo (Catapult); listen to Lauren’s conversation with Sindya here!
The Magical Language of Others and The Liberators by E. J. Koh (Tin House Books)
Wednesday’s Child and The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America by Navied Mahdavian (Princeton Architectural Press); listen to Lauren’s conversation with Navied here!
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The Write Question team for this episode was Lauren Korn, host, co-producer, and editor; and Chris Moyles, co-producer, editor, and sound engineer. This episode is supported by Fact & Fiction, an independent bookstore located in the heart of downtown Missoula, Montana, providing books for all ages and supporting the literary community in Montana and beyond. More information can be found at factandfictionbooks.com.
The Write Question logo and brand (2022) was designed by Molly Russell. You can see more of her work at iamthemollruss.com and on Instagram @iamthemollruss.
Funding for The Write Question comes from Humanities Montana; members of Montana Public Radio; and from the Greater Montana Foundation—encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.
The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.
