The Paradise of Food

As India - and Islamic culture - hardens, the narrator, whose life we follow from boyhood to old age, struggles to find a place for himself, at odds in his home and in the world outside. But to describe the novel in its plot is to do its originality no justice. In this profoundly daring work - tense, mysterious, even unfathomable on occasion - Jawed builds an atmosphere of gloom and grotesqueness to draw out his themes. And in doing so he penetrates deep into the dark heart of middle-class Muslims today. Superbly translated, The Paradise of Food is a novel like no other.