{"title":"Naomi Kanakia","description":"\u003cp\u003eNaomi Kanakia's works invite readers into a thoughtful exploration of contemporary life, blending elements of \u003cem\u003egeneral fiction\u003c\/em\u003e with sharp insights into \u003cstrong\u003earts and culture\u003c\/strong\u003e. Her storytelling often weaves nuanced characters and everyday realities with broader cultural reflections, creating narratives that resonate beyond the page.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom meditations on literary tradition to the subtleties of modern existence, Kanakia's books challenge and engage, offering a fresh perspective for those curious about the intersections of art, society, and the human experience.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-default-world-by-naomi-kanakia-9781558613164","title":"The Default World","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA trans woman sets out to exploit a group of wealthy roommates, only to fall under the spell of their glamorous, hedonistic lifestyle in tech-bubble San Francisco.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eYears after fleeing San Francisco and getting sober, Jhanvi has made a life for herself working at a grocery co-op and saving for her surgeries. But when her friend (and sometimes more) Henry mentions that he and his techie festival-goer friends spent $100,000 to transform a warehouse basement into a sex dungeon, Jhanvi starts wondering if there's a way to exploit these gullible idiots. She returns to San Francisco, hatching a plan to marry Henry for his company's generous healthcare benefits.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJhanvi enters a world of beautiful, decadent fire-eaters and their lavish sex parties. But as her pretensions to cynicism and control start to fade, she develops a Gatsbyesque attraction to these happy young people and their bold claims of unconditional love. But do any of her privileged new friends really like or accept her? Her financial needs expose the limits of a community built on limitless self-expression, and soon she has to choose between doing what's right, and doing what's right for her.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis darkly funny novel skewers privileged leftist millennial tech culture, and asks whether \u003cem\u003efound family\u003c\/em\u003e is just another of the twenty-first century's broken promises.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47487586435308,"sku":"9781558613164","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/10aee66fd34fe5c323399342edfecc00.jpg?v=1775773284"},{"product_id":"whats-so-great-about-the-great-books-by-naomi-kanakia-9780691251929","title":"What's So Great About the Great Books?","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA popular novelist and literary blogger answers those who claim the classics are too difficult, too problematic, and too white, and explains what we gain by reading them.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhen she was in her early twenties, then-aspiring writer Naomi Kanakia set out to read the Great Books—humankind's most highly regarded literary classics, representing \"the best that human beings have thought or said\", as determined by the two elderly intellectuals who'd written the guidebook she consulted. After twenty years, she has made her way through about two-thirds of these books and she's found reading them to be an immensely pleasurable and insightful activity. Plato, Milton, Tolstoy, Proust, all those dead guys—their books have stood the test of time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBut since beginning her journey, Kanakia has found that although reading the Great Books is part of a longstanding tradition of engaging with the thought of previous generations, it is also a highly contingent activity that arose out of a specific time and place, the brainchild of a small group of early twentieth-century popularisers associated with Columbia University and the University of Chicago. And people have always been sceptical about the idea of reading the Great Books, asking if this is truly a realistic or even desirable goal for the ordinary person. A more recent and growing group of Great Books sceptics asks if these works are too problematic, reactionary, and irrelevant to bother reading. Kanakia, a self-described \"left-of-centre person\", grapples with these objections, attempting to restore context for the Great Books even as she sticks up for them. Because books that expose us to fundamental truths about the nature of beauty and reality are worth fighting for.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat's So Great About the Great Books?\u003c\/em\u003e by Naomi Kanakia is an exploration into the enduring value of classic literature, challenging modern scepticism and reaffirming the timeless relevance of these works.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47934423859436,"sku":"9780691251929","price":66.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780691251929-what-s-so-great-about-the-great-books.jpg?v=1783918212"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.pro\/collections\/naomi-kanakia.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}