Sonora Jha: Surrender to the Surprise in Your Story
In this interview, author Sonora Jha discusses writing about love in a time of loneliness with her new novel, Intemperance.
Sonora Jha is the author of the novels The Laughter and Foreign, and the memoir How to Raise a Feminist Son. After a career as a journalist covering crime, politics, and culture in India and Singapore, she moved to the United States to earn a PhD in media and public affairs. Sonora and her work have been featured in the New York Times and literary anthologies, on the BBC, and elsewhere. She teaches at Seattle University and lives in Seattle. Follow her on X (Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky.
In this interview, Sonora discusses writing about love in a time of loneliness with her new novel, Intemperance, her hope for readers, and more.
Name: Sonora Jha
Literary agent: Soumeya Bendimerad Roberts
Book title: Intemperance
Publisher: Harper Via
Release date: October 14, 2025
Genre/category: Literary Fiction
Previous titles: The Laughter, How to Raise a Feminist Son, Foreign
Elevator pitch: A 55-year-old woman decides to hold a swayamvar, a ceremony to make men compete for her affections by performing feats of strength and will. Along the way, she has to reckon with public outrage, with myths and goddesses from her Indian culture showing up to thwart her plans, with a generational curse in her family, and with her own cynicism about love.
What prompted you to write this book?
I wanted to tell a story about the search for love in a time of increasing loneliness and alienation. I was drawn to the idea of a woman choosing a mate on her own terms in middle age, a woman quite like myself, but wilder and a little unhinged. I wanted to set the story in Seattle but bring in her culture’s ancient traditions, mythology, and family dysfunctions.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
It took around two years. My publisher bought the book just two chapters in, and then I spent around a year and a half immersed in the writing. The idea deepened as I wrote, and I developed the story into not just the spectacle of the swayamvar, but about the journey toward it. The woman has to decide what feat she must make the men perform on the day of the swayamvar, and the story is of the people she meets along the way who help her decide. It grew into a story about friendships and community and wild ancestral blessings.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I was anxious about how my editor, Rakesh Satyal at Harper Via, would receive the rest of the novel, having only read the first two chapters. I was pleasantly surprised that he appreciated the twists and turns the story took. He nudged me to keep the cadence and structure taut, for which I am thankful.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
Yes. I was surprised when I had the urge to travel to my father’s ancestral village in Bihar, in India. I hadn’t been there since I was two years old. And yet, I felt that there was a story that would take shape there, and I had to follow my instincts. When I was there, with three generations of women in my family around me, a story came to me that involved an inter-caste, queer love between the protagonist’s great uncle and a young man who worked for him in their litchi orchards. This story surprised me and landed beautifully into the novel.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I want readers to be delighted, I want them to surrender to a dream-like state that I wanted to craft in the storytelling, and I want them to have conversations around love, the bliss of female solitude, and the celebration of a fiendishly playful feminism.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Surrender to the surprise in your story.
