They had already lost their country. Now they were waiting to discover whether they would lose themselves. New Delhi, 1985. A family of seven Afghan refugees lives in the uncertain space between departure and arrival, between the home they can never return to and the future they cannot yet reach. The Soviet war has driven them out. Western embassies have not yet let them in. So they wait, in a small rented apartment in a city that is not theirs, with a single television set that has become the eighth member of the family. Told through the eyes of an eleven-year-old daughter — third child, second girl, too tall for her chair, too foreign for her school, A Family of Seven and One T.V. moves in nine comic chapters through the months of waiting. A father who believes the news is more important than dinner. A mother who knows better and cooks anyway. A grandmother — Bibi — small, sharp, unkillable, who trusts people even less than she trusts machines, and who once, in front of the grandchildren, admitted to a small, harmless crush on Amitabh Bachchan. An oldest brother already planning his escape route. A silent older sister promoted, unofficially, to second mother. A baby brother who has mastered the ancient art of being adorable while doing nothing helpful. Around them, the television flickers through war footage and Bollywood dance numbers with equal devotion, and the family argues, mourns, dreams, and laughs around it as though it were a hearth. Tender, funny, and quietly devastating, this debut novel from Anosha Zereh is a deeply human story about exile, belonging, and the small absurdities that make survival possible. A love letter to the women who hold families together across continents, to the children who learn the world by watching it on a borrowed screen, and to every family of seven, or twelve, or one, that has had to learn how to begin again. A rare story of the refugee experience told in the key of lighthearted comedy. Seven refugees. One television. No one is touching the dial.
