A romantic novel with some social commentary, Sonali Dev’s ‘Pride and Prejudice and Other Flavours’ very loosely follows the Austen original. This is all to the good, as most Austen retellings are pale shadows of the originals. (see ‘A Multitude...
~ Stealing Green Mangoes, by Sunil Dutta ~ Two brothers, of whom one grows up to be a cop and one to be a criminal. It sounds like a Hindi film script, indeed. But this dichotomy is just one of...
~ The Farm, by Joanne Ramos ~ This is definitely a debut novel. It was a pleasant read, but was flawed in many of the typical ways a debut novel too often is, if lacking editorial support. The title of...
~ Three Daughters of Eve, by Elif Shafak ~ An engaging novel, characterised by a distinctive writing style which demonstrates a fine-tuned consciousness and critical awareness. Particularly enjoyable are the author’s acerbic but good tempered observations on Turks, Turkey, and...
~ Number One Chinese Restaurant, by Lillian Li ~ Joining other recent debut novels by Asian/Chinese American authors such as Jenny Zhang (Sour Heart, 2017) Lily Wang (Family Trust, 2018), Lillian Li’s novel also purports to examine relationships and family...
~ Family Trust, by Kathy Wang ~ This novel predominantly set in the Bay Area – though it is also partially sited in Hong Kong, Bali, etc. – features elite Asian Americans who attended Ivy League universities and hold high-paying...
~ Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, by Balli Kaur Jaswal ~ The first thing to note is that the Punjabi widows of the title live in London, perhaps not one’s first guess at a location for women living heavily circumscribed...
~ Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill ~ Although I was born and brought up in a cricket-mad country and have been surrounded by cricket-o-philes for much of my life, I have no particular interest in the sport and can name only...
~ Custody, by Manju Kapur ~ This novel contains Manju Kapur’s most radical protagonist to date. If one regards Kapur’s five novels as a series in her ouevre, Custody challenges Indian tradition and Indian middle class gender roles in a...
~ A God in Every Stone, by Kamila Shamsie ~ For those of us who are avid Shamsie-readers, this sixth novel is an eagerly awaited one. Kamila Shamsie’s first four novels (In the City By the Sea, Salt and Saffron,...
~ Foreign, by Sonora Jha ~ The context of this novel contains many interesting elements: the protagonist is an Indian woman who after rejection by her son’s father, migrated to the US and had not been back to visit India...
~ The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of The Indian-American Elite and The Fall of The Galleon Hedge Fund. By Anita Raghavan ~ The billionaire of the title is Raj Rajaratnam, the charismatic, Sri-Lanka-born hedge fund CEO whose success was built...
~ Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ~ This extremely accomplished novel is Adichie’s fourth: a marvellous discussion of the identities of middle class Nigerian immigrants to America and UK, as well as migrant returnees to Nigeria. The central protagonists are...
~ Madras on Rainy Days, by Samina Ali ~ In her first novel, Samina Ali has fallen prey to that common problem of first-time novelists: the temptation to stuff every possible ‘issue’ into a single story. Which is a pity;...
~ Family Life, by Akhil Sharma ~ Unlike Sharma’s first novel, An Obedient Father, which was set in India, Family Life is a story of Indian immigrants to America. The Mishras, a middle-class Delhi family, migrate to New York in...
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