Abundance | Hafeez Lakhani in conversation with Ivonne Lamazares

🎟 This event is FREE and open to the public and books will be available for purchase the night of the event! An RSVP grants general entry, but seating is not guaranteed, so please try and show up early. Please RSVP only if you intend to join us. Can't make the event?

In suburban Miami, sixty-year-old Sakeena—co-owner of a Dunkin’ franchise along with her husband, Ramzan—has nine months to live unless she consents to an organ transplant. Thirty years ago, at Ramzan’s behest, she left her beloved Rawalpindi, India, for the United States. In the years that followed, she compromised her belief in naseeb, the Muslim notion of destiny, and acquiesced to fertility treatments. This time, she is adamant that she should live as intended—without medical intervention. As her health deteriorates, Ramzan desperately seeks to reunite their grown children with the hope of convincing Sakeena to extend her life.

But there are complications. Eldest daughter Fareen is consumed by an important business deal that, if successful, will land her a highly desired (and lucrative) promotion. Meanwhile, youngest son Adnan is living abroad and unable to return to the States due to his own unscrupulous business practices, a pattern stretching back to his adolescence. If they have any hope of saving their mother’s life, the siblings must take extraordinary action to wrestle with their life choices, actions that reveal the always-present tension between ambition and fate.
Brought to life by prose that captures the spirit of contemporary Miami as effortlessly as it conveys the challenges of running a Dunkin’ franchise, Abundance is a beautiful, moving read from an exciting new American voice.

HAFEEZ LAKHANI was born in Hyderabad, India, and raised in suburban South Florida. His fiction and essays have appeared in Crazyhorse, Exposition Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tikkun, The Cortland Review, and The Southern Review, among other publications. He has received fellowships from PEN America and the Center for Fiction, has been recognized twice with a Notable Essay in Best American Essays, and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.

IVONNE LAMAZARES was born in Havana. She left Cuba at the age of thirteen and settled in Florida. Her first novel, The Sugar Island, was translated into seven languages. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Latina magazine, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, and elsewhere. Lamazares is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and three Florida Individual Artist Fellowships. She lives in Miami and teaches writing at Miami Dade College.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Books & Books