Curry: Eating, Reading and Race - Softcover

'Who knew curry could be so political?... tying together the symbolism of curry with issues of immigration, alienation and racism.' -- Observer

'Drawing parallels between food and literature, Ruthnum writes incisively about the danger of letting a singular narrative abound when it's a narrative that creates stereotypes and feeds tired notions of what it means to be part of the Indian diaspora... But by playing the messy notions of what a curry is or isn't, Ruthnum has penned his own currybook, albeit one that tells the story of what it means to be a brown person on his own terms without pandering to external preconceptions of what South Asian writing should be.' --Big Issue

By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta's Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford's Heat, Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavour calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.