Hundred-foot Journey / Richard C. Morais 245 p.

Hundred-foot Journey / Richard C. Morais 245 p.

Now a motion picture, this is the story of Hassan Haji, a boy from Mumbai, India. Hassan narrates his own story beginning with his grandfather who starts a restaurant during World War II which his father inherits. The father expands and grows the business.  When his mother dies in a fire, the entire family migrates to London.  There they languish, in sorrow, until his father takes them on a tour of Europe where they discover a small village in France.  There his father turns to what he does best, running an Indian restaurant; and, evokes the ire of the 2 star French chef.  There develops a war albeit a culinary war where Madame Mallory seeks to oust Hassan's father.  She has met her match as he counters each of her moves until a disaster happens.  Madame Mallory finds herself offering a chef position to Hassan and the die is cast for him to pursue his own Michelin stars and, ultimately, his own Parisian restaurant.  Morais rich descriptive prose gives life to the story.  The sights, sounds, and smells float off the page as he describes the trek of the Haji family from Mumbai to Paris. 

Behind the beautiful forevers : [life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity] / Katherine Boo / 256 pgs.

The author, Katherine Boo, spent four years following and interviewing residents of a poor shanty town in Mumbai, India to document and describe their daily life.  The book centers on a tragic event, where a women sets herself on fire, but accuses her neighbors of the crime in hopes of disrupting and destroying their lives.  From there she follows the families involved and their neighbors to unravel the mystery as to what actually happened and what caused the incident.  With each person that is introduced into the narrative, their life history and day-to-day activities are described.  You end up with a very detailed look into the lives of a group of people who are so poor and desperate that they are willing to go to unspeakable extremes, including ingesting rat poison or setting themselves on fire.  She also describes a government and social caste system that is so corrupt that the chances of one of the villagers being able to lift themselves out of poverty is next to none.

A depressing, but important look at living conditions that we (hopefully) will never experience.  I only wish there was more said about how we can help or what needs to be done to change this very intricate and overwhelming problem.

The City of Devi / Manil Suri / 379 pages

The City of Devi by Manil Suri is a dark, humorously satirical, book set in Mumbai in the middle of the apocalypse.  It is part literary fiction, part suspense, part off-beat romance, multi-cultural and International – defying categorization and the stereotypes it pokes fun at.

The story is narrated by both Sarita, a Hindu searching for her missing, physicist husband on the eve of Mumbai’s destruction by Pakistan, and Jaz, a gay Muslim looking for his lover.  Their search takes them across a nearly deserted Mumbai, where they encounter bands of thugs, party-goers, and religious fanatics gathered to worship the Devi ma, patron goddess of the city.  What they find at their journey’s end promises to change both of their lives forever.

The City of Devi is an offbeat, dark romance tied up in mythology and suspense in modern day India. It may appeal to readers of apocalyptic fiction, romance, suspense, and literary fiction. But, is not for those who are easily shocked or offended. Similar works might include White Noise by Don DeLillo, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Seketu Mehta, and (at least for me, because it kept coming to mind as I read this book) Dracula by Bram Stoker.