For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus

Disillusioned with modern romance, globe-trotting Meena tries an arranged marriage with Avi, an aspiring politician in Ohio. But when Avi’s political opponent launches racist attacks, Meena and Avi are forced to defend their immigrant community, which narrowly understands its own traditions, and protect their increasingly shaky relationship. This is an intimate, funny, and heartbreaking novel about small-town America and the politics of marriage.
This debut novel looks at a contemporary couple of Indian background who opt for an arranged marriage. Meena and Avi go in with eyes open and settle in small town Ohio with the intention of making their relationship work. Varun Gauri narrates the story from both points of view with compassion and skill. Despite shared values and caring natures, the couple must navigate the stranglehold of family as well as familial judgment. Plenty of other misunderstandings and conflicts crop up to challenge their decision to marry. Gauri proves himself to be a wonderful storyteller. – Martha Toll, NPR 2024 Books We Love Selection
A keen-eyed comedy of manners, For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus tells the story of two people navigating the bumpy terrain of an arranged marriage while also contending with community politics in suburban Ohio. An exuberant debut that is as bitingly funny as it is wise. – Tania James, author of Loot, long-listed for the National Book Award
This novel has everything – gorgeous writing, a pacy plot, irreverent satire, lovable characters, and moments of devastating heartache. At the same time, Varun Gauri may be the wisest, most psychologically insightful of recent Indian American writers. You will understand marriage, romance, and diaspora culture from an entirely new perspective. This is a brilliant, hilarious, and wonderfully intimate first novel. – Akhil Sharma, author of Family Life, winner of the Folio Prize and International Dublin Literary Award
More Praise for the Book
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Varun Gauri’s debut novel brings an unexpected and clever twist to immigration-and-assimilation stories. It is a moving, funny, surprising book, one that you’ll miss long after you’ve finished reading. – Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others, finalist for the Man Booker Prize
Funny and serious by turns, this thoughtful novel explores the old and new among Indians in America. A beautiful, open-hearted book, it touches on basic human truths across cultures and ethnicities. – Suzanne Feldman, 2022 winner of the WWPH Fiction Award for The Witch Bottle and Other Stories
Could any woman say, years later, that on her wedding day she’d really known the man she was marrying? This question is posed in the first pages of this winsome debut about two modern Indian-Americans choosing arranged marriage. Varun Gauri deftly explores the meaning of commitment, the elusiveness of self-knowledge, the stubbornness of hope. For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus is a comic, heartbreaking gem. – Kathleen Wheaton, author of Aliens and Other Stories, winner of the 2013 WWPH Fiction Prize and 2024-2026 Stegner Fellow
With picture-perfect detail, crackling dialogue, and charming characters, Varun Gauri has created a wholly original world. With great care and authenticity, this novel renders Indian and American customs, ancient and modern rites and practices, women’s and men’s hearts and bodies, and all that is involved in the pursuit of true love and a happy marriage, arranged or not. – Sheila Kohler, author of the novel Open Secrets and the memoir Once We Were Sisters
For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus is luminous, a novel brimming with heart and humor and characters so richly imagined they feel like family. Varun Gauri writes with rare insight and deep compassion. His first novel is wise, lovely, deeply affecting, and, yes, a blessing. – Bret Anthony Johnston, Director of the Michener Center for Writers and author of the novels We Burn Daylight and Remember Me Like This
Varun Gauri captures the travails of a modern young Indian couple who find love the old-fashioned way, to the surprise of their families. The couple struggles with scheming relatives. Small town politics. Real estate deals. Nationalist agendas. What could possibly go wrong? For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus takes us into the heart of the Indian diaspora of suburban Ohio. It is a delightful comedy of manners that poses the question of whether every marriage is, in the final analysis, an arrangement. – Susan Coll, author of Real Life and Other Fictions and former president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation
The Big Indian Wedding comes to Ohio in ‘For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus’ by Varun Gauri. But for newlyweds Avi and Meena, their arranged marriage is much harder than they expected. “Was the idea of mixing East and West, acting simultaneously modern and traditional, a mistake?” Varun Gauri delivers an achingly intimate, irreverent novel about trying to find love in a marriage, while failing to fit into an immigrant community filled with social anxieties and unrealistic aspirations. – Leeya Mehta, Interim Director of the Alan Cheuse Center and poet, author of A Story of the World Before the Fence