Gone with the Vindaloo

Vikram Nair

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 purees 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 KESAVAN

Kalaam, a kathua, by caste a spinner of yarn, 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 extraordinary rendition of the Vindaloo, honed 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 the great US-of-A, 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 and packaged food in a whole new light.