In Hafeez Lakhani‘s debut novel, Abundance, readers meet two generations of a Muslim Indian family in suburban Miami as they grapple with ambition, faith, and the limits of control in pursuit of the American dream. When sixty-year-old Sakeena refuses a life-saving organ transplant, her husband and children are forced to confront their own choices, compromises, and beliefs about fate. Set against the backdrop of contemporary Miami and the pressures of immigrant family life, Abundance explores the tension between destiny and self-determination.
Lakhani was born in Hyderabad, India, and raised in suburban South Florida. Since then, his writing has helped him earn fellowships from PEN America and the Center for Fiction, he’s been recognized twice with a Notable Essay in Best American Essays, and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
Lakhani answered our My Reading Life Q&A so readers could learn the books that shaped his life and influenced his writing.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
I am a child of immigrants. English was not my first language. Growing up, I never saw either of my parents read a book for pleasure—they were too busy working until 8:00 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. each night. As such, though I loved reading as a kid—Choose Your Own Adventure type stuff—I had little exposure to literary work until middle and high school, when I began to love the books assigned in English classes. One that especially stuck with me was Huckleberry Finn, for its incredible invocation of voices. It planted a seed in me that characters in literature can be from any slice of life, can speak in any vernacular (including even characters like my own immigrant family). Another book I loved was The Grapes of Wrath, which launched my long love of family sagas—that is, a common family storyline alongside personal storylines of various members of the family. The bigness of that story—relevance to manifest destiny, to potentially an unachievable quality to the American dream, has stuck with me.
What book helped you through puberty?
Outside of required reading, I hardly read during puberty—I was a teenage boy too fixated on fitting in, etc. What brought me back to reading was one weekend during college, I was staying in to recover from a bug and a friend brought over Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Immediately, I was reminded of how much I loved reading; I finished the book that weekend and right away began Anna Karenina, which I also loved. My joy for reading quickly returned!
What book do you wish 16-year-old you had read?
Though it wasn’t published until later, I wish at 16 I could have read Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This book redefined contemporary literature for me: the hard slang, at times even uncouth vernacular; the characters living in projects in New Jersey and with ties to their Dominican roots. Though I knew in theory a story could exist about any slice of life (I was inspired by Huckleberry Finn, after all), Oscar Wao brought it all much closer to home, illuminating present day lives and even a diaspora that felt “outsider,” celebrating it all in contemporary literature.
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones, Mohsin Hamid’s Mothsmoke, Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
I’m a huge fan of Jonathan Franzen, particularly for his skill in structuring a sprawling family saga across characters and across time. Freedom, Purity, and Crossroads were models to explore the main arc of a family while also diving into individual conflicts in each character within a family.
What books are on your nightstand now?
A Far-Flung Life by M.L. Stedman, This is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin, The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu, Martyr by Kaveh Akbar, and Tailbone by Che Yeun, who happens to be an old friend from a writing workshop.