The Laughter

December 19, 2022
Jha follows her memoir How to Raise a Feminist Son with a tense and propulsive tale of race and power on a Seattle college campus. Oliver, a divorced English professor, has been fantasizing about his much younger colleague Ruhaba, a Pakistani Muslim law professor. After Ruhaba’s 15-year-old nephew, Adil, arrives from France under murky circumstances to live with her, Oliver hires the reticent teen to walk his dog as a means to ingratiate himself with Ruhaba. From the outset it is clear something unsettling has taken place, with Adil revealed to be in the hospital and Oliver frequently visited by the FBI, though Jha doesn’t hint at what happened. Oliver narrates with an arch tone, believing he’s “getting warmer” in his quest to get close to Ruhaba, but as campus protests break out, he is dismayed to discover the two of them are on different sides of social justice issues, as Ruhaba joins students’ demands to “decentralize whiteness.” Jha mordantly portrays the bewilderment of Oliver and other liberal white professors at accusations of racism, and casts the self-congratulating sanctimony of younger faculty under a similarly withering light. With careers at stake, disturbing secrets emerge and Oliver’s earlier musings about Ruhaba suddenly assume a more sinister cast. Jha’s gripping passion play will shock readers.

Starred review from February 1, 2023
Jha's new novel examines the political culture of a college in Seattle. On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, Oliver Harding, an aging White professor of literature, laughs at Trump supporters and feels assured of Clinton's coming victory, like liberals all over the country. But when he begins to develop an infatuation with Ruhaba Khan, a younger Pakistani colleague, he starts to become embroiled in an apparently shady drama surrounding Ruhaba's teenage nephew, Adil Alam, who's come to stay with her from his home in France. As Oliver grows closer to Ruhaba, campus politics begin to escalate, and these rumblings throw his position into question, his instincts beginning to belie his sense of himself as a liberal, accepting person. Told in a chronology that alternates between a present tense in the aftermath of some awful event (the details of which are as yet unclear) and flashbacks to the weeks leading up to that event, the narrative pulses with a sense of growing unease and inevitable tragedy that perfectly reflects its historical moment. This pacing is very careful, and suspense builds gradually. Oliver's sheer lack of self-awareness makes for many a comic moment, particularly juxtaposed as it is with his academic grandiosity, although this precise pairing can make him a difficult narrator to spend time with--and indeed, as the novel progresses, he grows more despicable. Yet the overall result is a novel that is both enjoyable and thought-provoking. Jha impressively avoids the trap of preachiness and moralizing that stories of identity politics on campus tend to fall into; rather, hers is a subtle and nuanced look at the subject. The novel plants seeds that turn out to be red herrings, building layer upon layer of assumptions--about campus culture, identity politics, religion, East versus West, racism, and terrorism. These assumptions are subverted and inverted, reminding us that, despite what some campus iconoclasts or national political figures might want us to believe, these matters are not usually black and white. A powerful and darkly funny campus novel with an unexpected narrative perspective.

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Starred review from January 1, 2023
Oliver Harding is the kind of older white male college professor who would absolutely hate being described that way. Sure, he internally mocks his students' desires for safe spaces and the shifting rules around pronouns, but he likes to think he's open-minded. (Most narcissists think fairly highly of themselves, after all.) In the fall of 2016, he falls head over heels for fellow professor Ruhaba Khan, who is gorgeous, graceful, and unlike any woman he's ever met. They strike up a friendship that remains platonic, to Oliver's chagrin, though he's happy for any chance to be closer to Ruhaba. When Ruhaba's teenage nephew arrives from France for an extended visit, what seemed to be a harmless fixation of Oliver's sets into motion a tragic chain of events. Journalism professor and first-time novelist Jha's (How to Raise a Feminist Son, 2021) bitingly satirical tale of a maddeningly clever yet frustratingly myopic protagonist is a gem. Apt to draw comparisons to Kate Weinberg's The Truants (2020) and Michael Downing's Still in Love (2019), the novel includes letters and emails that add context to Oliver's unreliable narration. Examining old prejudices, new fixations, and the sting of unrequited love, Jha offers a complete triumph.

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