Lords of Serendipity

Author(s): Randy Boyagoda

Location(s): Sri Lanka (Ceylon), United States (USA)

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): Contemporary

Devi is a Sri Lankan village girl who dreams of going to Harvard. Devi’s father cleans toilets in a five-star hotel to pay for his daughter to be tutored by a dapper young Indian man – who might not be the Oxford scholar he claims to be on Whatsapp …

Katrina is a middle-class American girl whose life has been designed to get her into an elite liberal arts college. Katrina’s father teaches extra courses at a mediocre technical university to pay for his daughter’s academic experiences. Meanwhile, his tech bro TA expertly extorts money from international students terrified of flunking out and being deported …

Set between contemporary Sri Lanka and the United States, Lords of Serendipity is a global campus novel for the 21st century, a funny, moving, and sharply observed story about dreams and ambition meeting corruption and hypocrisy, about strivers and hustlers, and the lengths parents will go to for their children.

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