Book Description
 
Malavika Kannan establishes herself as an inimitable voice of Gen Z in this piercing coming-of-age debut novel.

Which comes first: experience or narrative? Rishi thinks she knows the answer as she arrives on campus for her first year at Stanford. A burnt-out youth climate activist, she used to want to save the world, but now she just wants to have gay sex. Her plan is set—she’s going to leave behind the strict trappings of her Indian American childhood in Florida, study literature, experiment with love, and write all about it. Within a few months, she makes her first best friend, falls in love with her situationship, and promptly gets her heart broken.

What is not a part of Rishi’s plan is the onset of the COVID pandemic. As the outside world becomes a terrifying place, she increasingly finds solace in the friendships she’s made. Instead of virtual college, however, Rishi and her classmates join a farm collective, where their political discussions and growing disillusionment collide with sexual tension and responsibility. It’s only when those relationships start fracturing under the stress of careless decisions, unrequited crushes, jealousies, and, yes, unprecedented times, that Rishi begins to question her own story.

Unprecedented Times captures the beauty, humor, pain, and straight-up chaos that exist in relationships between best friends and lovers, mothers and daughters, and between storytellers and themselves. Malavika Kannan’s fresh, arresting novel is a testament to the power of self-narrative for Gen Z American women: of writing oneself into existence where no previous script exists.
 
About the Author
Malavika Kannan (b. 2001) is a Tamil American writer whose work appears in The Nation, The Washington Post, New York, Teen Vogue, and elsewhere. Her villain origin story is that, as a teenager in Florida, she organized for generational movements such as March for Our Lives and the Women’s March. Her YA novel All the Yellow Suns was published in 2023. She graduated from Stanford University and now moonlights as a gay socialite in Brooklyn, where she co-hosts the popular mutual aid supper club Girls Eat Girls.
 
Reviews
One of the Goodreads Editors’ August Book Picks
One of Harper’s Bazaar’s Best New Novels of the Summer
One of Ms. Magazine and Debutiful’s Most Anticipated Debut Books of the Year
One of The Millions’, and Alta’s Most Anticipated Books of the Summer
One of Autostraddle, Book Riot and LGBTQ Read’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Fiction Books
One of Lit Hub’s and BookBrowse’s Most Anticipated Books of the Year

“This very well might be the first Great American Gen Z Novel.”
—Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful

“Razor-sharp . . . Rishi is a relatable narrator, letting the reader in on both her most vulnerable thoughts and most biting social commentary. A sparkling work of fiction, this story feels like pages ripped straight from your funniest friend’s diary.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Tender and sharp-witted . . . Readers will find much to love in this smart and searching coming-of-age tale.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Kannan is an authentic and inviting new talent. Move over, Erica Jong!”
—Nob Hill Gazette

“Malavika Kannan’s Unprecedented Times pulses with longing, intelligence, and the slippery thrills of trying to turn life into art. Kannan tracks the unruly force of Rishi’s mind with energy, wit, and tenderness. Rishi is deeply alive on the page—searching, funny, cutting, horny, insecure, grandiose, politically aware, and vulnerable. I loved her. This is a portrait of youth in crisis, but also of queer friendship and self-making: of coming of age in a burning world, of the ways we invent and undermine ourselves, of the ways intimacy can become both shelter and wreckage. Vivid and ambitious, sharp and moving, this debut confirms Kannan as a voice and mind to watch.”
—Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of the National Book Award finalist All This Could Be Different

“I've rarely read a novel so unapologetically situated within the mindset of the earliest years of adulthood, when making your way in the world is as thrilling as it is terrifying, and all of experience feels unprecedented. Malavika Kannan writes with such sharp perceptiveness about the wild confusion of youth — the aimlessness and ambition, the simultaneous desire for independence and for communion — that, night after night while reading this novel, I dreamt of being back there myself. I couldn't put this book down.”
—Vauhini Vara, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Immortal King Rao

“Rishi arrives at Stanford with dreams of being a writer but the world has other plans. Unprecedented Times is a bold and hilarious novel of big ideas and deep feeling. Malavika Kannan’s sentences tear across the page like a powerful storm. A life-giving debut.”
—Laura van den Berg, author of State of Paradise

“Unprecedented Times holds all the youth and assurance of a fresh new day. Malavika Kannan writes with a rare fearlessness about what the world promises versus what our lives actually turn out to be. A deeply propulsive read, as well as wonderfully insightful and funny. Unprecedented Times is a bright and lovely work.”
—Kristen Arnett, bestselling author of Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One

“Unprecedented Times made me laugh, cry, and rage—often within the same paragraph . . . Kannan’s voice is hilarious and generous, and her incisive portrayal of navigating college as a second-generation immigrant kept me up late into the night. I absolutely could not put this book down.”
—Lamya H, award-winning author of Hijab Butch Blues