Gone with the Vindaloo

Vikram Nair s novel is a lunatic romp that begins as a colonial adventure and ends with the conquest of the West by Indian fast food. Like a runaway food processor, it rounds up pink colonial sahibs, ambitious wogs, pedigreed bawarchis, gross desi public-school boys, a Russian heroine called Svetlana, godmen and Woodstock, and pur es them into a lavatorial epic. If you want to read funny foodie fiction that takes the pleasures of the flesh seriously, this is your novel. MUKUL KESAVANKalaam, by caste a spinner of yarns, discovers by delicious accident that he has a God-given flair for concocting the most delectable recipes a gift that he passes through his son Param to his grandson Pakwaan, the true inheritor of his passion and talent. It is Pakwaan s signature Vindaloo, tempered to mouth-watering perfection, that catches the fancy of everyone who tastes it, including Svetlana, a nirvana-seeking Russo-American who is convinced that this dish (and its very exotic creator) is the answer to the Western world s craving for all things exotic. But what adventures await the starry-eyed Pakwaan in America, the promised land of possibilities?A rollicking ride through a century s worth of history, Gone with the Vindaloo follows the lives, times and exploits of three generations in a family of cooks. Delightfully subversive and consistently irreverent, this many-layered debut serves up imperialism, consumerism, packaged food and the very art of storytelling in a flavour all its own.'