India grown-up book

I am a self-professed Indian fiction junkie.  It did cross my mind with the busy upcoming month to just pick one of the fantastic books I've read before and pawn it off on Whirls and Twirls as a new read.  But that's not the point, right?

Instead, I've gone the other direction and picked out two new books. 

The first book is fiction:

Luka and the Fire of Life
by Salman Rushdie
I have to admit, I'm a little ambivalent about Salman Rushdie.  Twice I've started Midnight's Children,  considered by many to be his finest book (and the finest book of Indian fiction).  But I've never been able to finish it.  I usually finish my books and I usually love the kind of narrative that he writes, laden with juicy details that transport the reader to another place and time.  But there were just so many details I lost sight of the story and stopped caring about the characters and eventually just put the book down.  Twice.  So, why am I picking another Rushdie book?  Well, I loved another of his books - Haroun and the Sea of Stories, a mystical tale about a young boy and the power of story.  Luka and the Fire of Life is a sort of sequel.  Both books were written by Rushdie for his children and there is fable-like quality to them.


The second book is a memoir, a genre I'm really coming to enjoy:

Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India
by Miranda Kennedy
It's written by an American woman who went to Delhi in her mid-20s, working as a reporter for NPR.  Having ventured to Delhi on my own in mid-20s, I am curious to read her take on it and revisit my own memories of my time there.  This memoir is specifically about the lives of several women that she met and befriended, and their outlook on love and marriage. 


And if neither of these are quite what you're in the mood for, I can highly recommend books by Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Seth, and Kiran Desai (among others).  Contact me for specific recommendations, I'm very happy to share.  

China Grown-Up Book

Back to a memoir, but with a different angle this month.  My brother did a round-the-world trip last year, mainly with the purpose of eating his way through different countries.  He recommended this book about China.  Living in Singapore, we are inundated with diverse Chinese food options and I'm curious to learn more about the variety of dishes, cooking styles, and flavors.  I'm a few pages in and offer a warning: this is not for the faint-hearted.  The author - a British food writer who spent years in China - discusses how (in sometimes sharp detail) the Chinese eat pretty much everything. 

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China
by Fuchsia Dunlop
Here's the description from the author's website:
"An extraordinary memoir of an Englishwoman’s attempt to immerse herself in Chinese food and Chinese culinary culture. In the course of her decade-long journey, Fuchsia undergoes an apprenticeship at a Sichuanese cooking school, where she is the only foreign student in a class of nearly fifty young Chinese men; attempts, hilariously, to persuade Chinese people that ‘Western food’ is neither ‘simple’ nor ‘bland’; and samples a multitude of exotic ingredients, including sea cucumber, civet cat, scorpion, rabbit-heads and the ovarian fat of the snow frog. But is it possible for a Westerner to become a true convert to the Chinese way of eating? In an encounter with a caterpillar in an Oxford kitchen, Fuchsia is forced to put this to the test."

Peru Grown-Up Book

I put out a request from friends on Facebook for a book set in or about Peru, and this one came highly recommended. It's written by Mario Vargas Llosa, probably the best-known Peruvian novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010.

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
by Mario Vargas Llosa
It sounds like a soap opera of a book and a great read. From Goodreads: "When sexy, sophisticated, older Aunt Julia gets divorced from her Bolivian husband, she heads home to Peru in search of a new mate who can support her in high style. She finds instead her libidinous nephew Varguitas - a young, impoverished law student who works at a ramshackle radio station and aspires to be a fiction writer. Will their love survive the horror of the family? The shock of the community? The considerable difference in their ages? Meanwhile, a new, hotshot scriptwriter of racy radio soap operas, who turns out stories filled with murder, incest, rape, and perversion, has all of Peru listening in. Reality merges with fantasy as Mario Vargas Llosa juggles a madcap cast of characters and carouses through a world of forbidden passion, in a novel The New York Times Book Review named one of the twelve best of 1982."

Malaysia Grown-Up Books

I'm feeling ambitious this month and will try to read two books, one non-fiction about Borneo (East Malaysia) and one fiction set in Peninsular Malaysia.

Reflections of Eden: My Years with the Orangutans of Borneo
by Birute M.F. Galdikas

This is a memoir by the scientist who has spent more time studying orangutans than any other, living for 40 years in Borneo. It's the story of her work with the orangutans, conservation efforts, and life on the island. I've long been fascinated by orangutans and when I found out we were moving to Singapore, one of the top things on my list was to see orangutans in their natural habitat. So I'm thrilled about our upcoming trip to Borneo and interested to read Galdikas' account of her experiences there.

Evening is the Whole Day
by Preeta Samarasan
This book about an Indian-Malaysian family gets a great review from National Public Radio. From the author's website: "When the family's rubber-plantation servant girl is dismissed for unnamed crimes, it is only the latest in a series of precipitous losses that have shaken six-year-old Aasha's life. In the space of several weeks her grandmother died under mysterious circumstances and her older sister, Uma, left for Columbia University, gone forever. Circling through years of family history to arrive at the moment of Uma's departure — stranding her worshipful younger sister in a family, and a country, slowly going to pieces — Evening Is the Whole Day illuminates in heartbreaking detail one Indian immigrant family's layers of secrets and lies, while exposing the complex underbelly of Malaysia itself."

Kenya Grown-Up Books

Unbowed: A Memoir
by Wangari Maathai

I noticed that a lot of the children's books about Kenya were about a woman named Wangari Maathai, the winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. We're reading two of them. As a compliment, I'm going to read Wangari Maathai's memoir Unbowed. Also, for our giving back activity this month, we'll donate to Maathai's organization (so hopefully I still feel inspired after reading her book!).

Another book that I've read that I would highly recommend, if you prefer fiction, is:
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
by M.G. Vassanji
The main character is an African-Indian and it is historical fiction at its best, spanning Kenya's fight for independence and the post-colonial era.