The Complex with authors Karan Mahajan and Rita Bullwinkel
Schedule
Wed Mar 25 2026 at 06:00 pm to 07:30 pm
UTC-07:00Location
Mechanics' Institute | San Francisco, CA
Join National Book Award finalist Karan Mahajan, in conversation with Rita Bullwinkel, on his latest novel The Complex.About this Event
Join National Book Award finalist Karan Mahajan, in conversation with Rita Bullwinkel, on his latest novel The Complex - a brilliant, sweeping tour de force moving between the US and modern India, following the illicit liaisons, real estate dramas, political ambitions, and mortal betrayals of one prominent Delhi family.
In a sprawling complex in Delhi, the sons and daughters of SP Chopra, one of India’s political architects, live together vying for influence in a family shaped by the great man’s legacy. By the late 1970s, his descendants are scrambling to define their own futures in a still-young nation on the brink of transformation. As India erupts in violence and long-buried secrets come to light, the embattled Chopras must reckon with the cost of power, the weight of tradition, and the shifting nature of love and allegiance. Equal parts brilliant family saga and piercing political drama, The Complex is a virtuosic novel of revenge and redemption, ambition and undoing, loyalty and love, by one of the most lauded voices in contemporary fiction.
About the Speaker
is the author of Family Planning, a finalist for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and The Association of Small Bombs, which was shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award, won the 2017 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s "10 Best Books of 2016." In 2017, he was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. His reporting and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker Online, and other venues. He teaches at Brown University.
About the Moderator
is the author of Headshot (2024) and Belly Up, which garnered a 2022 Whiting Award. Bullwinkel’s writing has been published in Tin House, the White Review, ZYZZYVA, Conjunctions, BOMB, Vice, NOON, and Guernica. She is a recipient of grants and fellowships from MacDowell, Brown University, Vanderbilt University, Hawthornden Castle and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Her work has been translated into Italian, Greek, and Dutch. Both her fiction and translation have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. She is an Editor at Large for McSweeney’s, the Deputy Editor of The Believer, a Contributing Editor for NOON, and the creator of Oral Florist.
$5 for Members, $15 for Non-Members
Where is it happening?
Mechanics' Institute, 57 Post Street, San Francisco, United StatesUSD 7.18 to USD 17.85
