The Laughter by Sonora Jha

The Laughter by Sonora Jha

The rundown: It’s fall 2016, and narrator Dr. Oliver Harding, a tenured, aging, white English professor, knows that the political climate on campus is changing, whether he likes it or not. But he’s canny enough to know to keep his outdated, ivory tower beliefs to himself, even as they come under fire, when a student protest for more diversity breaks out across campus. When Oliver becomes fixated on younger, hijabi Muslim colleague Dr. Ruhaba Khan, who openly supports the protest, and her newly arrived French teenage nephew, the three become ensnared in a spiraling web of obsessive desire, radicalization, and privilege that erupts in an instance of shocking violence, forcing us to confront the assumptions we make.

The review: This book is sharp and perceptive and, frankly, a tad nauseating, and I love all of those things in a satire. Oliver’s sexualization, fetishization, and exoticization of Ruhaba are tough to read but also hard to look away from. Some readers will be turned off by Jha’s choice to tell the story from an incredibly, intentionally unlikeable character’s point of view, but I hold that it’s what makes this book so compelling. Jha rides the line between character and caricature nicely; readers are meant to take Oliver seriously enough that we can’t easily dismiss him, but at the same time it’s clear that Oliver’s account of events - told through his private journal entries - is of questionable reliability. It’s a shrewd way to explore how those with power shape narratives, and it pays off big with the explosive, absolutely bonkers ending.

Goes well with: This book is Vladimir by Julia May Jones but if the husband narrated the story with a voice similar to that of Harry from Chinelo Okparanta’s eponymous Harry Sylvester Bird, plus a dash of The Latinist by Mark Prins.