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Karan Mahajan

Goodreads Author

Website

http://www.karan-mahajan.com

Twitter

kmahaj

Genre

Fiction, Nonfiction

Member Since

October 2008

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/kmahaj

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Karan Mahajan is the author of "The Association of Small Bombs," which was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review. His debut novel "Family Planning" was a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. He has been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New York Review of Books, and other venues. He is an associate professor in Literary Arts at Brown University. His third novel, "The Complex," is forthcoming in March 2026. ...more

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Karan Mahajan’s books

Average rating: 3.56 · 15,363 ratings · 1,800 reviews · 6 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Association of Small Bombs 3.57 avg rating — 14,622 ratings — published 2016 — 28 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Family Planning 3.05 avg rating — 481 ratings — published 2008 — 31 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Granta 139: Best of Young American Novelists 3 by Sigrid Rausing (Editor), Jesse Ball (Goodreads Author) (Contributor), Halle Butler (Goodreads Author) (Contributor) 3.47 avg rating — 250 ratings — published 2017 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Complex 4.35 avg rating — 17 ratings — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Chapter Zero: Excerpted from The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan (Goodreads Author), Tony Tulathimutte (Goodreads Author) (Foreword) 4.71 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2016	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Vastu Shastra ke Rahasya (Part-1) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Jakob von Gunten

by Robert Walser

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Dec 19, 2008 03:47AM

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Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us

by Tom Vanderbilt

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Dec 19, 2008 03:40AM

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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

by Naomi Klein

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Dec 19, 2008 03:40AM

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Karan rated a book it was amazing The Complex by Karan Mahajan (Goodreads Author)	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
taking preemptive action LOL
Sep 19, 2025 06:54AM · 12 likes · like · see review

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Quotes by Karan Mahajan (?)

“When things are good, you can see no other way of living; when things are in ruins, there appear a million solutions for how this fate could have been avoided.”
― Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs

24 likes

“American life is based on a reassurance that we like one another but won’t violate one another’s privacies. This makes it a land of small talk. Two people greet each other happily, with friendliness, but might know each other for years before venturing basic questions about each other’s backgrounds....In the East, I’ve heard it said, there’s intimacy without friendship; in the West, there’s friendship without intimacy.”
― Karan Mahajan

11 likes

“The best way to describe what he felt would be to say that first he was blind, then he could see everything. This is what it felt like to be a bomb. You were coiled up, majestic with blackness, unaware that the universe outside you existed, and then a wire snapped and ripped open your eyelids all the way around and you had a vision of the world that was 360 degrees, and everything in your purview was doomed by seeing.”
― Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Tournament of Books: Schedule and Longlist	31	327	Jul 22, 2016 12:56PM
Tournament of Books: Shortlist	40	205	Sep 12, 2016 09:34AM
Tournament of Books: Opening Rounds 5-8	65	144	Sep 22, 2016 08:41AM
Tournament of Books: The Association of Small Bombs	3	76	Sep 28, 2016 06:18PM
Tournament of Books: Quarterfinal Rounds 1-4	44	134	Sep 28, 2016 06:35PM