Author Randy Boyagoda visits KPL to discuss his latest novel, Lords of Serendipity, in conversation with Ira Wells, President of PEN Canada.

Devi is a Sri Lankan village girl who dreams of going to Harvard. Katrina is a middle-class American girl whose life has been designed to get her into an elite liberal arts college. Devi’s father cleans toilets in a five-star hotel to pay for his daughter’s Indian tutor, who might not be the Oxford student he claims to be on WhatsApp. Katrina’s father teaches extra courses at a mediocre technical university to pay for his daughter’s academic lifestyle experiences. Meanwhile, his tech-bro TA expertly extorts money from international students worried about flunking and getting deported.

Set between contemporary Sri Lanka and the United States, Lords of Serendipity is a wry, moving, and sharply observed story about how rich and poor alike try to get ahead by going to university. It’s about dreams and ambition meeting corruption and hypocrisy. It’s about what parents are willing to do for their children, and about what strivers and hustlers are willing to do when they meet gatekeepers.

"Randy Boyagoda delightfully skewers the industrial-academic complex but also creates moving characters who seem to have walked in from the dorm and faculty meeting next door. The result is as moving as it is hysterically funny.” - Gary Shteyngart, New York Times Bestselling author of Vera, or Faith

About the Author

RANDY BOYAGODA is a novelist who writes about books and ideas for publications including The Atlantic, The New York Times, and the Financial Times. He is the author of six books, including the novels Dante's Indiana, Beggar’s Feast, and Original Prin. Randy's work has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize, and named a Globe and Mail Best Book of the year. He is a professor of English at the University of Toronto.

About the Moderator

IRA WELLS is a critic, essayist, and associate professor at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where he serves as Academic Programs Director and teaches in the Northrop Frye stream in literature and the humanities in the Vic One Program. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Globe and Mail, Guardian, The New Republic, and many other venues. His most recent book is On Book Banning: How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy.

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