Nalini Jones, author of The Unbroken Coast, in conversation with Jim Shepard
When:
Wednesday, Sep 03, 2025 7:00p -
8:00p
Wednesday, Sep 03, 2025 7:00p -
8:00p
Where:
Porter Square Books
1815 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02140
Admission:
FREE
Hosted by:
Categories:
Lectures & Conferences
Event website:
https://portersquarebooks.com/event/2025-09-03/nalini-jones-author-unbroken-coast-conversation-jim-shepard
Porter Square Books is excited to welcome Nalini Jones for her novel The Unbroken Coast.
This event will take place at our CAMBRIDGE store. We offer validated parking in the lot on Roseland St. behind Lesley's University Hall. See parking details below.
RSVP here to let us know you're coming and to receive event updates!*
*Please note that you will not receive a confirmation email. However, we will send a reminder email one day before the event. Please check your spam folder if you do not see the pre-event email reminder. Better yet, add [email protected] to your safe sender list to avoid PSB event emails going to spam!
ABOUT THE UNBROKEN COAST
A stunning debut novel set in and around a Mumbai fishing village that follows the friendship between a young girl struggling to find her place in the world, and an aging historian reckoning with his past.
On the night his granddaughter is born in America, Professor Francis Almeida rides a bicycle through his quiet Catholic neighborhood in a suburb of Mumbai. It is 1978. He has recently retired, his grown children are scattered across the globe, and for the first time in decades, he is not sure what he should do next. A few streets from his home, in the heart of a Koli fishing village, he encounters a young mother praying for her baby daughter, ill with dengue fever, at the shrine of Our Lady of Navigators. He hopes the child will live.
Nearly a decade later, Francis meets the child again. She is Celia, daughter of a fisherman who is running from a debt collector. When an accident brings their families together, both Celia and Francis find themselves with unexpected new allies.
Spanning the turbulent years when Bombay became Mumbai, at time when environmental and economic pressures are just beginning to change the fortunes of indigenous fisherfolk, The Unbroken Coast is a lyrical novel that explores memory, faith, storytelling, and the nature of home.
PRAISE FOR THE UNBROKEN COAST
“What a beautifully formed novel. With its changing portraits of two families in a Catholic fishing village outside Mumbai, The Unbroken Coast does what the best fiction does—it is utterly particular and utterly large. And I could not put it down.”
—Joan Silber, author of Improvement and Mercy
“The Unbroken Coast is a beguiling epic about a Catholic community in Mumbai grappling with the treacheries of progress and the inexorable march of time. Illness devastates the novel’s humble, endearing protagonist, who bravely crosses class boundaries in her enthralling search for peace. Readers will find a home in Jones’s razor-sharp portraits of family life.”
—Hirsh Sawhney, author of South Haven
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Nalini Jones is the author of a story collection, What You Call Winter. Her writing has appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, Guernica, Elle India, Scroll, and numerous other publications in the U.S. and India. She has been awarded a National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship, among other honors, and her short story “Tiger” was selected for O. Henry and Pushcart prizes. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, daughters, and dogs, and teaches at Fairfield University.
Jim Shepard has written eight novels, including The Book of Aron, which won the Sophie Brody Medal for Jewish Literature, the PEN/New England Award for Fiction, and the Clark Fiction Prize, and six story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, a finalist for the National Book Award and Story Prize winner, and The Queen of Bad Influences, forthcoming in Fall 2026. Eight of his stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and three for Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at Williams College.
PARKING
Porter Square Books: Cambridge Edition offers validated parking in the lot on Roseland St. behind Lesley's University Hall. Roseland Street is accessible by Beacon Street and Mass Ave. When you arrive at the lot, use the screen on the kiosk to get a ticket.
When you're ready to leave, ask for a validation barcode at the cash register. (No purchase necessary.) Parking is free on weekends and weekday evenings from 6PM-7AM. From 7AM-6PM on weekdays the first 45 minutes are free.
Upon exiting the lot, scan your ticket and choose "validation." Then scan the barcode your received from us. If you have an additional charge, you will be prompted to pay after scanning your barcode.
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