Thieving Sun: A Novel

In this searing debut novel, for readers of Katie Kitamura and Rachel Cusk, an obsessive first love affair and its tragic aftermath decades later brings one woman's life in New York and pursuit of art into searing focus. The writing is dazzling and mysterious, and the world Datta builds - one filled with grief, questions of origin, and the act of creation - is expansive yet so precise. I don't know why this book isn't getting more attention. -Lauren Ro, Vulture In this searing debut novel, for readers of Katie Kitamura and Rachel Cusk, the tragic aftermath of a youthful relationship years after its end brings the life of a mourning woman in New York--and the pursuit of art--into stark relief. Told in short passages through a musical device, this international story follows Julienne and Gaspar to Syria, China, Germany and elsewhere. Julienne, a student of sculpture, and Gaspar, a young composer, fall in love at a small college and share a home for more than a decade before encountering the fundamental rift that will change their lives. The reverberations of grief force Julienne to confront her painful past including the mystery of her own birth and the fantastical story ascribed to it by her flight attendant mother, so that she can envision, for the first time, a real future. Ultimately, Thieving Sun is a profound and contemporary meditation on art, grief, debt, suicide, loss, and the danger of being alive.

About the Author :
Monica Datta received degrees in architecture and urban design from the City University of New York, the London School of Economics, and the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), as well as an MFA in creative writing from Washington University in St. Louis, from which she received a Divided City/Mellon Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to study segregation in fiction and urban morphology in France, Morocco, and Germany. Her writing has appeared in The New Inquiry, Conjunctions, and many other journals. She teaches at Pratt Institute and the Cooper Union.

Review :
The writing is dazzling and mysterious, and the world Datta builds — one filled with grief, questions of origin, and the act of creation — is expansive yet so precise. I don’t know why this book isn’t getting more attention. —Lauren Ro, Vulture

"Monica Datta's prose gallops like music and glitters like shards. Formally daring and compulsively readable, Thieving Sun heralds the arrival of an extraordinary talent."
—Susan Choi, author of National Book Award winner Trust Exercise

"Thieving Sun is a highly intelligent, staggeringly inventive novel structured by music scales indicating time, but it's more than that: emotionally powerful, sad, whimsical, and beautiful, this book is a dizzying delight. Monica Datta is a startlingly inventive writer who has written a moving story of love and loss. Absolutely brilliant."
—Brandon Hobson, author of National Book Award finalist Where the Dead Sit Talking

"Intricate, enigmatic, piccant and fascinating."
—Lucy Ellmann, author of Goldsmiths Prize winner Ducks, Newburyport