The Innkeeper

For fans of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility—with a hint of Forrest Gump—The Innkeeper deftly weaves themes of history, identity, myth-making, and privilege into a whimsical quest for love and agency in an age of soulless mechanization.

A chance encounter on a crisp fall afternoon—between a new grad’s bike and a young innkeeper’s ice cream cone—sends the narrator of this charming novel careening into an unexpected future. After helping her home, he is astonished to find that the sprawling, antique filled inn Samantha manages is no ordinary bed-and-breakfast. It’s also a switching-station in time—where past, present, and future mingle in the drawing room.

In need of a new housing situation, eager to fit in in America, and anxious to avoid returning to the secretive and superstitious nation he calls home, the narrator decides to move in. Juggling a demanding day job at a fast-rising startup by day, by night he mingles with and soon plays host to the cast of eccentric and often famous guests from history who frequent the Inn—all presided over by the mysterious and mercurial Madame. What he doesn’t expect is to fall in love—with the guests, with a beautiful medical school student from the future, and even with working at the Inn itself.

But the narrator’s own future is less certain. A succession crisis is underway in his home country of Ratnastan, and try as he might, it seems he may never outrun the curse of his family’s past. And when an unexpected visitor shows up at the Inn one night, everything he thought he knew about where he comes from threatens to come unraveled—with consequences that will ripple across time itself …