BOOKS WE RECOMMEND THIS WEEK

From two powerful and heart-warming novels by Balli Kaur Jaswal, to a non-fiction presenting a comprehensive history of the Chinese civilisation, our book picks this week, curated by Chirdeep Malhotra

LITERARY FICTION

“Inheritance” by Balli Kaur Jaswal

“Inheritance” is acclaimed author Balli Kaur Jaswal’s first novel, first published in Australia in 2013, and then in Singapore in 2016. Indian editions of her books “Inheritance” and “Sugerbread” have been published by HarperCollins India in 2020. For Indian readers, who are already familiar with her books “Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows: A Novel” and “The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters”, this has come as a welcome delight. In almost all her books, she vividly portrays the South Asian Diaspora, navigating their lives in new surroundings, and having in their hearts a yearning for home and familiar traditions.
The book is set in Singapore between the 1970s and 1990s, and follows the familial fissures that develop after teenaged Amrit disappears from her house in the middle of the night. Although her absence is brief, she returns as a different person. Over the next two decades, her actions affect three generations of her Sikh family in Singapore. And as Singapore’s political, social and cultural landscapes change, the family attempts to cope with the shifts—those coming from outside and from within. Balli Kaur Jaswal's award-winning first novel (she won Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Novelist Award 2014 for this book) is a tender yet powerful portrayal of mental illness. It is also a poignant yet unsparing portrait of a family struggling to preserve tradition in the face of an ever-changing nation.



“Sugarbread” by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Balli Kaur Jaswal’s literary talent is in her usage of powerful, heart-warming and evocative prose. This book follows the story of Pin, a 10-year-old who is warned against becoming anything like her mother, Jini. However, nobody would tell her the reason for this. Seeking clues, she tries to figure out her mother's moods through her cooking. She also has other battles to fight – being a bursary student in an elite Christian school, and facing hateful racial taunts from Bus Uncle and some classmates. When her meddlesome Nani ji moves in to stay with them, she brings with her a new set of rules. And then, some old secrets are revealed and Pin must try to face the truth.
This life-affirming second novel by Balli Kaur Jaswal, first published in 2016 (and the Indian edition in 2020), is a coming-of-age story about women, sexism, racism, food and memory.



NON-FICTION

“The Story of China: A Portrait of a Civilisation and its People” by Michael Wood

In this book, author and historian Michael Wood presents a compelling portrait of China, one of oldest living civilisations on earth. Despite this, China’s history is still surprisingly little known in the wider world. In this enthralling account of China’s 4000-year-old tradition, the author mingles the grand sweep with local and personal stories, woven together with his own travel journals.
The extensive narrative is enriched with the latest archaeological and documentary discoveries; court cases going back to the Qin and Han dynasties; family letters from soldiers in the real-life Terracotta Army; and stories from Silk Road merchants and Buddhist travellers. The book also presents modern insights into the manifestos of the feminist revolutionaries Qiu Jin and He Zhen, the Japanese invasion, the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao, the Tiananmen Square crisis of 1989, and the new order of President Xi Jinping.



GASTRONOMY

“Eating With History: Ancient Trade-Influenced Cuisines of Kerala” by Tanya Abraham

An invaluable compendium of a culinary tradition and variety of food recipes that evolved out of Kerala’s kitchens, this book takes readers on a food trail, detailing how foreign cooking techniques and exotic flavours were curried to life from foreign trade influences and became significant foods in this coastal state. There are numerous recipes in each foreign-influenced community in Kerala, well represented in this book, in meticulous detail. These recipes were cherished by the families and handed down generations via cross-cultural interactions within Jews of the Paradesi and Malabari sects, Syrian Christians, Muslims, Anglo-Indians, Latin Catholics and others who mingled with and evolved from the local populace.
This book provides a well-researched and rich cultural history of foreign food culture, tracing how the new elements adapted to local food traditions and evolved as a parallel line of foods, creating new textures, flavours and tastes.