Born in Stamford, Conn., Karan Mahajan grew up in New Delhi, where as a young teenager he covered cricket for an international sports network. His second novel, “The Association of Small Bombs,” won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 2017 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Its chapter zero describes a 1996 car bomb blast in a New Delhi market, and the book becomes, as Elizabeth McCraken calls it, “a brilliant description of aftermath.” Both

Mahajan has toggled between the literary and journalistic arts, and between India and the United States. He earned degrees from Stanford University and the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas in Austin. When the novelist was 12, Kashmiri separatists set off a car bomb a few miles from his home. The 9-11 attacks brought that memory to the fore.

The Asterisk* caught up with Professor Mahajan in October 2023 via Zoom. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island where he teaches literary arts at Brown University. His third novel, “The Complex,” is due out in early 2025.