"Almost every story here is a study in restraint, Sen’s considerable talent evident in her ability to wring meaning from the smallest details. Quiet, emotionally gripping stories."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"This intelligent collection from Sen explores themes of isolation and connection with clear, direct prose. . . . Recommended for readers who enjoy thoughtful fiction with well-developed characters navigating difficult situations."
—Library Journal
"In this winner of the 2021 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, characters find themselves adrift and longing for companionship and understanding. In a world where physical borders are at times more porous than social ones, their quests for love, friendship, or self-knowledge are circuitous and take them in surprising directions."
—"Ten Questions for Chaitali Sen,” Poets & Writers
"A fantastic collection."
—Liberty Hardy, Book Riot's "All the Books"
"Sen’s gift for being forthright—for finding the precise language to capture even a fleeting feeling—is matched by her gift for restraint, her willingness to leave silence on the page, to let language be the best tool we have for forging connection or understanding and still, frequently, not enough."
—Danielle Evans, Electric Literature "Recommended Reading"
"Chaitali Sen has a breathtaking way of capturing the quiet, internal tumult of each of these characters, examining migration, relationships, and humanity."
—Book Riot, "15 Excellent 2023 Short Story Collections by Asian Authors"
"I picked up [A New Race of Men from Heaven], and boy, was I glad I did."
—Liberty Hardy, Book Riot's "All the Books!" Podcast
"Rereading A New Race of Men from Heaven, I became aware of the bones of Sen’s stories, as well as the laborious work of laying down their skeletal structure. I had to go back and ask, as a jealous writer, how she did this. I found, underneath a perfect skeleton, a long set-up."
—Gemini Wahhaj, Cleaver
“A New Race of Men from Heaven is a collection of poignant stories about wanderers who are never truly lost. It features a lonely man joining a search party, a grieving widow’s journey to the United States, and a writer’s unexpected encounter with an imposter. These migration-themed narratives embody enduring love and hope."
—Saurabh Chawla for Storizen
"Sen is a sure-handed, reflective guide through her characters’ new and old worlds, their large and small concerns, and their extraordinary ordinary lives."
—Colorado Review
"Sen’s stories mirror the expansive feel of a novel; there’s room to enjoy her skillful sentences, there’s room to travel from Calcutta to London to Austin to Ithaca, and there’s room to enjoy the way her characters interact with the world, as kind, self-sacrificing, sometimes fumbling, sometimes impulsive, good humans."
—Julie Poole for Sightlines
"Understated, lyrical prose."
—"The Best Books, Film, TV, Art & More Coming to Texas This Winter" by Rose Cahalan, Texas Monthly
“The stories in A New Race of Men from Heaven move elegantly between the ache of loneliness and the grace of connection, however fleeting.”
—Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections
"A New Race of Men from Heaven is a stunning and masterful collection. With great insight and compassion, Chaitali Sen explores characters as they negotiate issues of displacement and connection; her vision is wise and expansive.”
—Karen E. Bender, author of The New Order
“Chaitali Sen’s beautiful, tender, absorbing stories grapple with minor and major complications in the lives of Indian men, women, and children, traveling across continents in full exploration of the contemporary immigrant experience. Lyrical, nostalgic, tragic, and sometimes understatedly funny, these stories are as heart-wrenching as they are clever, and will resonate with me for a very long time.”
—Chinelo Okparanta, author of Harry Sylvester Bird
“A storytelling sword wielded with such precision, virtuosity, and grace that you want the wound. A collection at once magnificent and cold-blooded. Read it.”
—Shobha Rao, author of Girls Burn Brighter
“In Chaitali Sen’s profoundly moving short story collection A New Race of Men From Heaven, her dislocated narrators are immigrants and orphans, acute observers or interlopers who find themselves in larger dramas as they try to figure out the right, just way to navigate the contradictions of contemporary life. Sen’s wonderfully engrossing portraits of these tender and unsettling characters told through such elegant and precise prose are a pleasure to read.”
—Chanelle Benz, author of The Gone Dead
"A New Race of Men from Heaven is a beautiful and moving story collection that shows us not only what it means to be an immigrant, regardless of where that journey may have started or happens to end, but also holds up a mirror to all the pain and joy that comes with being alive and engaged in the world today. Chaitali Sen knows her characters so intimately, knows what they yearn for, knows what keeps them up at night, knows what they are hiding from those closest to them and even from themselves, knows where they're most vulnerable, knows where they need healing. She will break your heart in so many ways."
—Oscar Cásares, author of Where We Come From
“These are wonderful stories—Chaitali Sen's characters are such dear human beings: mysterious and lovable, irritable and alive. Each story is beautiful but together they are even better, about the anxieties and amnesias of our time, how strange and essential we are to each other. Above all they are truly surprising, in the way of life itself.”
—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Souvenir Museum
“Chaitali Sen’s A New Race of Men from Heaven are more than just stories with wonderful characters and situations: they are revelations into the human spirit and the world in which that spirit lives. Written with utmost elegance, these stories radiate with such brightness that when you put the book down, it’s hard to adjust to the light of the real world. Sen is simply a master."
—Morgan Talty, author of Night of the Living Rez
“Chaitali Sen knows how to achieve that miraculous density that only comes from real mastery of the short story form. These stories are singularities: whole lives and selves and minds have been made, breathtakingly, to fit inside them. I felt these characters’ love and yearning in my bones. This is a brilliant collection.”
—Clare Beams, author of The Illness Lesson
