Winner of the 2025 New American Voices Award

Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize

Named a “Dazzling Debut” by the American Booksellers Association

Released March 4, 2025, from Graywolf Press.

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“The novel coheres into a crystalline portrait of a woman straddling cultures and expectations while attempting to discover who she is. It’s a knockout.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Quietly subversive, this is an immigration narrative to undermine the various reductionist immigration narratives of our moment.”—Jonathan Frey, The Millions

” …a work of art that breaks down and recreates [the immigrant] experience in a new constellation.”—Asya Partan, The Rumpus

“A seamless work that achieves what is often impossible—learning about a narrator through how they learn about others.”— Bex Frankeberger, Books Are Magic, Brooklyn, NY

“Pavitra’s elusive identity speaks to—and against—the representation that her interlocutors expect of an Indian woman and narrator. . . Sunder creates a strong voice in Pavitra, who eludes definition but whose presence stuns in its rare diffusions.”—Ben Lewellyn-Taylor, Colorado Review

“…this sharp story did exactly what I’d hoped—reminded me why I love reading again.”—Taylor Eisenhauer, Condé Nast Traveler

“A subtle and perceptive first novel. . . . [Sunder’s] work exemplifies one of literature’s great truths: Observant newcomers sometimes understand a place better than lifelong residents.”—Kevin Canfield, The Temz Review

“Shubha Sunder’s voice and storytelling are a delight—wry, poignant, and effortlessly engaging. Here is a fresh exploration of the cross-cultural experience. A timely and insightful novel that demands our attention.”—Weike Wang

“Optional Practical Training is as sharp, bright, and subtle as a blade hidden up a sleeve. Before you know it, it has sliced clear through the ether of absurdity that is immigrant life.”—Namwali Serpell

“Gloriously inquisitive about an immigrant’s peculiar position, at times delightfully combative, at other times wrenchingly gentle, Optional Practical Training is a novel that is always true to itself.”—Megha Majumdar

“Optional Practical Training is a knockout wonder. Shubha Sunder has created a rich and blazingly layered portrait of a young woman named Pavitra, who is fighting to not only be an artist, but fighting to discover a true sense of herself in a world that has so many ideas about how her life should be. This is a beautiful, and beautifully intimate, quest of a book—one where you will find yourself cheering for Pavitra very, very loudly—and I loved every page of it.”—Paul Yoon

“On the surface, Optional Practical Training is about the initial phase that many educated American immigrants go through nowadays, but at heart it is about how migrations change one from within and without. This story, fundamentally American as well as universal, is told in supple prose, with ease and grace, and gives a great deal of pleasure and insight.”—Ha Jin