A young woman in an arranged marriage awakens one day surprised to find herself in love with her husband. A retired divorcé tries to become the perfect partner by reading women's magazines. A man's longstanding contempt for his cousin suddenly shifts inward when he witnesses his cousin caring for a sick woman. Tender and darkly comic, the protagonists in a Life of Adventure and Delight deceive themselves and engage in odd behaviours as they navigate how to be good, how to make meaningful relationships and the strengths and pitfalls of self-interest. Elegantly written and emotionally immediate, the stories provide an intimate, honest assessment of human relationships between mothers and sons, sons and lovers and husband and wives from a dazzlingly original, critically acclaimed writer.

Akhil Sharma was born in Delhi in India and emigrated to the USA in 1979. His stories have been published in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, and included in the Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Collections. His first book, an Obedient Father, won the 2001 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. He was named one of Granta's 'Best of Young American Novelists' in 2007. His second novel, Family Life, won the 2015 Folio Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award 2016. Sharma is currently a fellow at the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and writers.