num_pages: 144
description: Curry is a dish that doesn't quite exist but as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out a dish that doesn't properly exist can have infinite equally authentic variations. 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 flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers readers and eaters. Following in the footsteps of Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands Curry cracks open anew the staid narrative of an authentically Indian diasporic experience.Naben Ruthnum won the Journey Prize for his short fiction has been a National Post books columnist and has written books and cultural criticism for the Globe and Mail Hazlitt and the Walrus. His crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Joyland and his pseudonym Nathan Ripley's first novel will appear in 2018. Ruthnum lives in Toronto.
language: English
title: Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race
publisher: Coach House Books