Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Story Through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate by Amitava Kumar [in AsianWeek]
07 Apr, by in Adult Readers, Indian, Indian American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Pakistani, Pakistani American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American
Amitava Kumar, a Hindu Indian writer based in the United States, marries a Pakistani Muslim in 1999 when India and Pakistan are at war: “I felt good about...
Not exactly one of the newest titles (it arrived later than sooner on my desk), but certainly noteworthy because of its subject matter. It opens with the Pakistani birth of Sadika – an unwanted...
Another tale of Pakistan (finally, multiple entries in this area!), this one a lyrically written love story – with all sorts of obstacles, of course – about a modern daughter running an inherited silk factory, and...
Call me old, but who really wants to read about a promiscuous 16-year-old school girl who uses her so-called charm to seduce an older divorcée, her societal power to seduce her servant, and her academic prowess...
In rural Pakistan, little Rani is sure that her mother loves Bibi, the pet chicken, more than she loves Rani. Rani even secretly threatens to eat the chicken. But when Bibi disappears, and Rani...
As the only South Asian in her middle school, Maya knows all about being different in her tiny Canadian town. She doesn’t speak Bengali, she’s at that awkward stage of pimples and endless limbs,...
Novelist and essayist (and frequent New York Review of Books contributor) Mishra adds to what seems to be a growing hybrid genre of memoir infused with history, philosophy, and politics. What begins...
A hybrid if I ever saw one: At the heart of the book is a sociological look at how food and ethnicity intersect in the immigrant world (think how our APA holiday tables might...
A touching, slim coming-of-age novel about young Maya who travels one summer to Chennai, India, with her mother. Both mother and daughter are still stinging from a year-old divorce. There in the folds of...
Maya Mehra, 30 and still living with her parents, gets kidnapped at LAX where she’s gone to pick up her unknown prospective husband. When she comes to, she is told that she’s...
The final installation in Mehta’s 11-title series, Continents of Exile, explores his father’s love affair with another woman, documented through their love letters – the eponymous Red Letters. Written without judgment following the deaths...
Devi’s failed suicide attempt sends her back home to her parents, where she refuses to speak but decides to cook. Before she can regain her voice – as she becomes...
An interesting departure for Desai, who turns to Mexico to tell the story of a hapless Boston graduate student who accompanies his ambitious girlfriend abroad. While wandering, he discovers a lost part of his...
Responding with Hope to 9/11: A Talk with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni About Her Latest Novel, Queen of Dreams
Three years after the tragic events of 9/11, 
Calling himself "quite an ordinary man" even as he tops his country's List of Shame, Vikram Lall recounts four decades of his "in-between" life in...
An academic – but thoroughly readable – look at what defines the growing, loose boundaries of South Asian American literature, an area in which titles appear to be multiplying daily.
Review: <a href="http://bookdragonreviews.wordpress.com/files/2009/07/asianweek-2004-10-28-new-and-notable.pdf"...
Bombay plays the starring role in this entertaining (at times disturbing) epic memoir by a South Asian American writer who returns to the world’s largest city – now called Mumbai – with his London-raised...
The Tree Bride picks up where 
In the latest installment in the Rei Shimura mystery series, Massey brings her hapa Japanese American heroine to Washington, DC, where she is designing a sleek fusion restaurant. Her political socialite cousin suddenly goes...