Nonfiction – Biography & Autobiography – Memoir – Travel – Essays & Travelogues

RELEASE DATE: 6/18/2024 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER’S WAREHOUSE)

From a wry, insightful, and very funny new voice, here is one womans peripatetic search for home, from Kashmir to England to Saudi Arabia to Michigan to Rome and, finally, to Los Angeles.

“I would follow Priyanka Mattoo to the ends of the earth, because she would know what to eat there, and how to make a friend, and then sit me down and tell me a story.” Emma Straub

Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden house in the Himalayas, as were most of her ancestors. In 1989, however, mounting violence in the region forced Mattoos community to flee. The home into which her family poured their dreams was reduced to a pile of rubble.

Mattoo never moved back to her beloved Kashmirbecause it no longer existed. She and her family just kept packing and unpacking and moving on. In forty years, Mattoo accumulated thirty-two different addresses, and she chronicles her nomadic existence with wit, wisdom, and an inimitable eye for light within the darkest moments.

AUTHOR BIO:

PRIYANKA MATTOO is a writer, filmmaker, former talent agent, and a cofounder of Earios, a women-led podcast network. She is a contributor toThe New York TimesandThe New Yorker,and a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. Mattoo holds degrees in Italian and law from the University of Michigan and currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and kids.

“Distinguished by its sharp wit and beating heart, this is a salve for wanderers of all stripes.”–Publishers Weekly

“I was enchanted by Mattoo’sBird Milk & Mosquito Bones,a remarkably vivid, moving epic of displacement and its aftermath. With brio, insight, and great warmth, this exceptional debut offers, as art can, a lasting home.”
–R. O. Kwon, author ofExhibit

“The magic ofBird Milk&Mosquito Bonesis that it takes us all over the world but always feels like it could be happening right next door. Priyanka Mattoo’s writing is steady and true and warm but also exquisitely insightful and precise. Her family is now our family. Her stories are a part of us. This book is an absolute treasure.”
–Jami Attenberg, author ofI Came All This Way to Meet You

“Priyanka Mattoo has recreated the beloved, intoxicating Kashmir of her childhood in this beautiful memoir, and in doing so, renders the place immortal. I would follow Mattoo to the ends of the earth, because she would know what to eat there, and how to make a friend, and then sit me down and tell me a story.”
–Emma Straub, author ofThis Time Tomorrow