A powerful meditation on identity, technology, and ethical responsibility

New Delhi — Award-winning author and journalist Vauhini Vara is set to release her much-anticipated new book, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, in stores across India on June 28. A compelling blend of memoir, cultural critique, and philosophical inquiry, the book examines how digital technologies have transformed human identity, community, and our collective sense of self.

Following the critical success of The Immortal King Rao—a Pulitzer Prize finalist—Vara once again delivers a bold, thought-provoking exploration of the digital age. In Searches, she turns her lens to the rise of big tech platforms such as Facebook and Amazon, questioning the social, economic, and environmental costs of progress. Woven through with personal reflections, Google search histories, and fragments of everyday online life, Vara’s work interrogates the promises and perils of our increasingly digitised world.

Early praise for the book has been strong. Esquire and cultural critic Anne Helen Petersen have named Searches one of the best books of the year. David Shields calls it a natural successor to Vara’s debut novel, while The New Yorker praises her as “an appealing narrator—smart, funny, honest.” LitHub hailed the collection as “a book of experiments… of the internet, of form, of possibilities, of ourselves.”

In her signature voice—sharp, humane, and deeply inquisitive—Vara neither condemns nor blindly celebrates the digital revolution. Instead, she urges readers to approach technological advancement with ethical mindfulness, challenging us to rethink how we engage with machines, data, and one another.

About the Author
Vauhini Vara is the author of the critically acclaimed The Immortal King Rao and This is Salvaged. Her work has earned numerous accolades, including the High Plains Book Award, the Kalinga Literary Festival Fiction Book Award, and shortlistings for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. In addition to her literary work, she is a contributing writer for Businessweek and a former editor at The New York Times Magazine. Vara also teaches at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project.

Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age is published by HarperCollins and will be available in stores and online beginning June 28, 2025.