A fascinating debut, a book as inventive as it is compelling. — Largehearted Boy

Monica Datta’s prose gallops like music and glitters like shards. Formally daring and compulsively readable, Thieving Sun heralds the arrival of an extraordinary talent. —Susan Choi, author of National Book Award winner Trust Exercise

Thieving Sun is a highly intelligent, staggeringly inventive novel structured by music scales indicating time, but it’s more than that: emotionally powerful, sad, whimsical, and beautiful, this book is a dizzying delight. Monica Datta is a startlingly inventive writer who has written a moving story of love and loss. Absolutely brilliant. —Brandon Hobson, author of National Book Award finalist The Removed

Intricate, enigmatic, piccant and fascinating. —Lucy Ellman, author of Goldsmiths Prize winner Ducks, Newburyport

Jumping around in time and perspective, Datta’s complex novel is an exploration of relationships, identity, and loss. — Rebecca Hopman, Booklist

In this searing debut novel, for readers of Katie Kitamura and Rachel Cusk, the tragic aftermath of a youthful relationship years after its end brings the life of a mourning woman in New York–and the pursuit of art–into stark relief.

Told in short passages through a musical device, this international story follows Julienne and Gaspar to Syria, China, Germany and elsewhere.

Julienne, a student of sculpture, and Gaspar, a young composer, fall in love at a small college and share a home for more than a decade before encountering the fundamental rift that will change their lives. The reverberations of grief force Julienne to confront her painful past including the mystery of her own birth and the fantastical story ascribed to it by her flight attendant mother, so that she can envision, for the first time, a real future.Ultimately, Thieving Sun is a profound and contemporary meditation on art, grief, debt, suicide, loss, and the danger of being alive.