Lords of Serendipity

'As moving as it is hysterically funny' Gary Shteyngart, author of Vera, or Faith'Tender, eviscerating, perfect' Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar WaoDevi, a Sri Lankan village girl dreams of going to Harvard University. Thousands of miles and tens of thousands of dollars to the west, Katrina, a middle-class American girl, steps onto the green-lawned quadrangle of an elite college for the best education money can buy. To pay for Devi's application fees, Devi's father works two shifts cleaning toilets at a five-star hotel in Colombo. Meanwhile, Katrina's professor dad commits himself to years of double teaching overload at his middling technical university to pay for her world-class tuition. Set between contemporary Sri Lanka and the United States, this is a moving, funny and sharply observed story of how the rich and poor get an education, and of dreams on a collision course with corruption and hypocrisy as the characters pursue family and personal goals, none of which is an education for its own sake. Full of warmth, comedic reversals and richly drawn characters, this is a sweeping family story which asks: what is an education for? And what are the costs - both financial and moral - to achieve it?