The book gives us a cultural history of Asian food and spices, from novels that feature curry to the myth of “authenticity” that has grown around it, right up to today’s “outbreak of turmeric lattes”. Who knew curry could be so political? But of course it is, argues Naben Ruthnum, a first-generation Mauritian-Canadian who self-consciously wants to defy the conventions of diasporic food literature which, he believes, dictate that the writer’s identity be implicitly linked to “a finding-out of who he/she really is in the rich smell of a Keralan masala”. Shortlisted for the Man Booker international prize in 2017, it was hailed as the antidote to “hygge”. This bewitching Danish novel reveals its tragicomic depths gradually. While her existential malaise contains moments of desperation, there are fabulously zingy one-liners alongside it. Sonja thinks in wry, quippy sentences and her delivery is deadpan. Her anxiety rounds on her lost connection with her sister, Kate. Sonja is a fortysomething singleton teetering on midlife crisis: she is learning to drive but not getting far she tries massage but is told “your energy field is impaired” there’s meditation and hiking, but nothing shakes off the fug.
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