Sucker Punch: Essays

Written by Scaachi Koul

Narrated by Scaachi Koul

“Koul reads the audiobook edition of her essays, her performance highlighting her sharp-witted humor and emotional vulnerability.” —Book Riot

This program is read by the author.

The long-awaited follow-up from one of the most original and hilarious voices writing today.

Scaachi Koul’s first book was a collection of raw, perceptive, and hilarious essays reckoning with the issues of race, body image, love, friendship, and growing up the daughter of immigrants. When the time came to start writing her next book, Scaachi assumed she’d be updating her story with essays about her elaborate four-day wedding, settling down to domestic bliss, and continuing her never-ending arguments with her parents. Instead, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Scaachi’s marriage fell apart, she lost her job, and her mother was diagnosed with cancer.

Sucker Punch is about what happens when the life you thought you’d be living radically changes course, everything you thought you knew about the world and yourself has tilted on its axis, and you have to start forging a new path forward. Scaachi employs her biting wit to interrogate her previous belief that fighting is the most effective tool for progress. She examines the fights she’s had—with her parents, her ex-husband, her friends, online strangers, and herself—all in an attempt to understand when a fight is worth having, and when it's better to walk away.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Mar 4, 2025
• ISBN: 9781250380029

Scaachi Koul

Scaachi Koul is a senior writer for Slate and a cohost of the Ambie Award-winning podcast Scamfluencers. She cohosted the Emmy-nominated Netflix series, Follow This, and her writing has appeared on This American Life, and in The New Yorker, New York, and The Cut. You can also find her in documentaries like Quiet on Set and Pretty Baby. Her bestselling book, One Day We’ll All Be Dead And None Of This Will Matter, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. You can follow her on Instagram and on her Substack, Hater Nation. She lives in Brooklyn.