Edison

Winner of the Asian American Writers' Workshop Pages in Progress contest

Edison is a Bollywood-style love story brimming with song and dance, action and comedy, a love triangle, an angry parent, an evil villain, and cameos by real Bollywood stars—a hilariously entertaining masala film in the guise of literary fiction. Along the way, we glean bits of Indian film history and fall in love with an improbable cast of characters who inhabit Edison, New Jersey's Little India.

Prem Kumar is the wayward youngest son of a titan of New Delhi industry. Obsessed with Indian movies—what the world comes to know as Bollywood—and uninterested in his father’s business empire, he runs away to America hoping to make a smash hit film. Arriving at JFK Airport, where his dreams are promptly shattered, he hails a taxi that deposits him in an Indian immigrant neighborhood in Edison, New Jersey.

Not inclined to work hard, Prem finds a mattress to crash on and a job at an Exxon gas station, biding his time until he comes up with a plan for his future. But when he falls head-over-heels in love with Leena, the ambitious and dutiful daughter of Hemant Engineer, the owner of Edison’s first Indian grocery store, her father decrees that they can only marry once Prem has earned one million and one dollars. Desperate to be with Leena but afraid he doesn’t have what it takes, will Prem find a way to earn Hemant’s blessing?

Edison is a wild, romantic, laugh-out-loud love letter to life, community, friendship, and the Indian American community of Edison, New Jersey, where debut author Pallavi Dixit grew up.