Zertab Quaderi

'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies'

Review of ‘Forgotten Foods: Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia’ (Picador India, 2023) edited by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Tarana Husain Khan, and Claire Chambers

The London Bookshop Affair and The Stationery Shop of Tehran are veritable time-travel portals. They offer a deep look at the political mishaps of the times

The 309-page-long dystopian novel is an oppressive account of Eilish who tries to keep her family from falling apart as everything around her crumbles.

When a book mentions one of my favourite authors, W. Somerset Maugham, and the short description suggests betrayal, intrigue, secret affairs, political uprisings, failed marriages, and a whodunnit, there’s little I can do but take it.

The literary world was shaken on August 12, 2022, when the news of Salman Rushdie being stabbed on stage in upstate New York started to pour in. Ironically, he was all set to talk about his involvement in a project to create a refuge in the USA for those writers who are not safe in their country.

Articles on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s last novel to be published by his sons against the author’s wishes built up my anticipation and I couldn’t wait for April to arrive. Thanks to Bookworm, I got my copy the moment they had it in store and I read it twice. It didn’t impress me the first time as it was just a string of chapters describing how a promiscuous woman drove herself into the arms of different men on her annual August 16 visits to a Caribbean island.

Thirty-odd years later, in my two-member home, I try to recreate the Ramzan vibes with overpriced and undersized lamps and lanterns sporting star and crescent motifs