"On the surface, Optional Practical Training is about the initial phase that many educated American immigrants go through nowadays, but at heart it is about how migrations change one from within and without. This story, fundamentally American as well as universal, is told in supple prose, with ease and grace, and gives a great deal of pleasure and insight."--Ha Jin, National Book Award winner and author of The Woman Back from Moscow

"Shubha Sunder's voice and storytelling are a delight--wry, poignant, and effortlessly engaging. Here is a fresh exploration of the cross-cultural experience. A timely and insightful novel that demands our attention."--Weike Wang, author of Rental House

"Optional Practical Training is a knockout wonder. Shubha Sunder has created a rich and blazingly layered portrait of a young woman named Pavitra, who is fighting to not only be an artist, but fighting to discover a true sense of herself in a world that has so many ideas about how her life should be. This is a beautiful, and beautifully intimate, quest of a book--one where you will find yourself cheering for Pavitra very, very loudly--and I loved every page of it."--Paul Yoon, author of The Hive and the Honey

"Gloriously inquisitive about an immigrant's peculiar position, at times delightfully combative, at other times wrenchingly gentle, Optional Practical Training is a novel that is always true to itself."--Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning

"Optional Practical Training is as sharp, bright, and subtle as a blade hidden up a sleeve. Before you know it, it has sliced clear through the ether of absurdity that is immigrant life."--Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows