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Fasting, Feasting

A wonderful novel in two parts, moving from the heart of a close-knit Indian household, with its restrictions and prejudices, its noisy warmth and sensual appreciation of food, to the cool centre of an American family, with its freedom and strangely self-denying attitudes to eating. In both it is ultimately the women who suffer, whether, paradoxically, from a surfeit of feasting and family life in India, or from self-denial and starvation in the US. Or both. Uma, the plain, older daughter still lives at home, frustrated in her attempts to escape and make a life for herself. Her Indian family is difficult, demanding but mostly, good-hearted. Despite her disappointments, Uma comes through as the survivor, avoiding an unfulfilling marriage, like her sister's, or a suicidal one, like that arranged for her pretty cousin. And in America, where young Arun goes as a student, men in the suburbs char hunks of bleeding meat while the women don't appear to cook or eat at all - seems bewildering and terrifying to the young Indian adolescent far from home...
Author: Anita Desai
Agent: Peter Straus
Territories: Chatto and Windus: British Commonwealth & European Community ex. Canada, Houghton Mifflin: United States, Catalan: Enciclopaedia Catalana (Catalan), Danish: Borgens (Denmark), Danish: Den Grimme Aelling, Dutch: BzzToH, Uitgeverij, French: Mercure de France, Greek: Livanis, Hebrew: Kinneret-Zmora Bitan -Dvir Publishing House, Italian: Einaudi (Italy), Polish: Academic Publishing House Dialog, Portuguese: Gradiva (Portugal), Portuguese: Planeta de Agostini (Portugal), Serbian: Laguna, Spanish: Alianza Editorial (Spain), Turkish: Alfa & Everest Yayinlari