Book description
MONSOON DIARY weaves a fascinating food narrative that combines
authentic vegetarian recipes from South India with tales from Shoba
Narayan's life, stories of her delightfully eccentric family, and
reflections on Indian culture.
Shoba recounts her childhood in South India, a portrait of
small-town life richly populated by characters like the flower woman
who brings jasmine for the gods, the milkman who names his cows after
his wives, and the iron-man who picks up red-hot coals with his bare
hands. Food is so important to her family that when Shoba wins a
scholarship to study in America, they only agree to let her go if she
prepares a successful banquet. She returns home to an arranged
marriage - to her surprise, the family have chosen well - and later
there are visits from her many relatives, old and new, to her home in
New York City.
In MONSOON DIARY, Shoba Narayan's culinary talent is matched by
stories as varied as Indian spices - at times pungent, mellow, piquant
and sweet. Her characters, like Shoba herself, have a thing or two to
say about cooking and about life.
SHOBA NARAYAN is a food and travel writer and has written for a
variety of press including Travel & Leisure, Newsweek, the New York
Times and the Wall Street Journal. Shoba won the James Beard
Foundation's MFK Fisher Award for her story 'The God of Small Feasts',
widely considered the most prestigious food writing award in the United
States. She also comments for NPR's Weekend All things Considered. Shoba
currently lives in Singapore with her husband and two children.
