Lords of Serendipity
On sale
3rd September 2026
Price: £18.99
Selected:
ebook / ISBN-13: 9780349148939
‘As moving as it is hysterically funny’ Gary Shteyngart, author of Vera, or Faith
‘Tender, eviscerating, perfect’ Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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 lifestyle. 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.
‘Tender, eviscerating, perfect’ Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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 lifestyle. 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.
Reviews
A book that's a feast, an occasion and a celebration. Randy Boyagoda delightfully skewers the industrial-academic complex but also creates moving characters who seem to have walked in from the dorm and faculty meeting next door. The result is as moving as it is hysterically funny
Randy Boyagoda's Lords of Serendipity is utterly fantastic and timely beyond belief. This is the campus novel we've all been waiting for: tender, eviscerating, perfect