Language | English |
---|---|
ISBN-10 | 0-14-303148-1 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0143031482 |
No of pages | 363 |
Font Size | Medium |
Book Publisher | Penguin India |
Published Date | 30 Nov 2004 |
Nilanjana S. Roy was a contributing opinion writer for The International New York Times in 2013-14. Ms. Roy is an Indian author who lives in New Delhi.
Her novel "The Wildings" was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award in India.
She is at work on a sequel, “The Hundred Names of Darkness,” and a collection of essays on the reading life, “How to Read in Indian.”
She also edited a 2005 anthology of food writing, “A Matter of Taste,” published by Penguin India.
For more than 15 years, Ms. Roy wrote a column on the reading life for the Business Standard daily newspaper.
She has also written on gender for The International Herald Tribune (now The International New York Times) and The Telegraph, a daily newspaper based in Kolkata, India.
Ms. Roy has been the chief editor at the Tranquebar Press (part of the publisher Westland Limited) and founded Katakana, a literary blog.
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A delectable collection of writing on food and its place in our lives that brings together some of the most significant Indian voices over the last century From lavish meals, modern diets and cooking lessons that serve as a rite of passage to fake fasts and real ones, fish, fen, and fiery meals that smack of revenge, this book has something to satisfy every palate.
Gandhi’s guilt-ridden account of his failed flirtation with eating meat starkly complements Ruchi Joshi’s toast to the senses as he describes his characters discovering a truly alternative use for some perfectly innocent Shrikant. In unique gastronomic takes on history, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Saadat Hasan Manta ensure that we will never look at chutney, a Tibetan Momo or jelly in quite the same way again.
Food becomes the less appetizing religious ‘line of control’ for Abdul Burmilla’s ‘guest’ when a simple meal illustrates the rather thin divide between guest and host, while subtler shades of deprivation mark Anjana Apachean’s Anu as she keeps a fast that reeks of prejudice.
And in faraway lands, ‘across the seven seas’, the search for fresh fish accentuates the loneliness of a life without familiar moorings for Jhumpa Lahiru’s Mrs. Sen even as Anita Desai’s Arun learns from his American hosts the importance of ‘keeping the freezer full’. As much about food as it is about good writing, A Matter of Taste serves up a veritable feast for the senses and food for thought to sample or devour, as one pleases.