The Massachusetts Review offers lavish praise for Shastri Akella's debut novel THE SEA ELEPHANTS, hailing it as an "earnest and aching debut novel" and a "patriarchy-piercing bildungsroman," with a "brisk and forward-facing narrative" that with the "sharp-eyed focus of [its] prose" achieves "[a] poignant success." Flatiron Books published the novel on July 11, 2023.