Claire Chambers

The kitchen is often the heart of South Asian homes. Muslim South Asian kitchens, in particular, are the engines of an entire culture. The alchemy that takes place within them affects nations and economies, politics and history, and of course human relationships. There is proof of it in Desi Delicacies, Claire Chambers’ anthology of essays, stories and recipes supplied by some of the region’s most well-loved writers, historians and chefs. An unexpected revelation awaits Nadeem Aslam in a London restaurant as he yearns for a special delicacy from Pakistan. Rana Safvi recounts the history of Awadhi cooking and the origins of qorma, while Sadaf Hussain tells us how the samosa came to be paired with chai and of his own newly found love for the beverage. Tabish Khair examines our attitudes towards food that is ‘jootha’. Death comes with an aftertaste of taar roti for the protagonist of Tarana Husain Khan’s story set in Rampur. Gulla puts his heart into making the perfect nardoo yakhni but is taken aback by a hairy surprise in Asiya Zahoor’s ‘The Hairy Curry’. A multitude of flavours blend with love, joy, grief, regret and nostalgia in this book which is not only a beautiful collection of food writing, but also a rich helping of the histories and cultures of Muslim South Asia and its diasporas. With a Foreword by Bina Shah and an Afterword by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley The cover image is a painting from the Nimatnama, a collection of recipes partly compiled during the reign of the moustachioed Sultan Ghiyas-ud-din of the Delhi Sultanate, who features on the cover.

Desi Delicacies

Richard Phillips

Nafhesa Ali

Star-studded and beautifully written, this collection offers diverse stories about love and desire by South Asian-heritage British Muslim women authors, including Ayisha Malik (Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged) and Shelina Janmohamed (Love in a Headscarf). Although outsiders often expect Muslim women to be timid, conservative, or submissive, the reality is different. While some of these authors express a quiet piety and explore poignant situations, others use black humor and biting satire, or play with possibilities. Still others shade into the territory of a Muslim Fifty Shades of Grey, creating grey areas where the mainstream media sees only black and white. If grooming-gang scandals grab headlines, characters are more scandalized by suitors' sloppy personal grooming. Finding the right crimson lipstick for a date or the perfect power outfit for meeting a cheating ex-husband are commoner preoccupations than the news. Stylish but far from shallow, the stories also reflect on migration, racism, arranged marriage, gender differences, lesbian desire, bearding, and many other subjects.

A Match Made in Heaven

Caroline Herbert

Literary, cinematic and media representations of the disputed category of the ‘South Asian Muslim’ have undergone substantial change in the last few decades and particularly since the events of September 11, 2001. Here we find the first book-length critical analysis of these representations of Muslims from South Asia and its diaspora in literature, the media, culture and cinema. Contributors contextualize these depictions against the burgeoning post-9/11 artistic interest in Islam, and also against cultural responses to earlier crises on the subcontinent such as Partition (1947), the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and secession of Bangladesh, the 1992 Ayodhya riots , the 2002 Gujarat genocide and the Kashmir conflict. Offering a comparative approach, the book explores connections between artists’ generic experimentalism and their interpretations of life as Muslims in South Asia and its diaspora, exploring literary and popular fiction, memoir, poetry, news media, and film. The collection highlights the diversity of representations of Muslims and the range of approaches to questions of Muslim religious and cultural identity, as well as secular discourse. Essays by leading scholars in the field highlight the significant role that literature, film, and other cultural products such as music can play in opening up space for complex reflections on Muslim identities and cultures, and how such imaginative cultural forms can enable us to rethink secularism and religion. Surveying a broad range of up-to-date writing and cultural production, this concise and pioneering critical analysis of representations of South Asian Muslims will be of interest to students and academics of a variety of subjects including Asian Studies, Literary Studies, Media Studies, Women’s Studies, Contemporary Politics, Migration History, Film studies, and Cultural Studies.

Secularism, Religion, Representations

Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora

Elaine Ryder

'Compassion, in its many manifestations, is the key to rediscovering what lies at the heart of nursing practice all over the world. It is absolutely essential that nurses start to revisit compassion as a central focus for nursing practice...' This user-friendly book adopts a patient-centred approach to care. The challenging theories are grounded in practical applications, encouraging readers to recognise opportunities for change in their daily practice. The book focuses on six key concepts central to compassionate care: A*

Compassion and Caring in Nursing

This delectable anthology of food literature explores the histories and cultures of Muslim South Asia and diaspora through fiction and life writing essays. Contributors include Nadeem Aslam, Tabish Khair, Annie Zaidi, Sarvat Hasin, Rosie Dastgir, Uzma Aslam Khan, Farahad Zama and others. The kitchen is often the heart of South Asian homes. Muslim South Asian kitchens, in particular, are the engines of an entire culture. The alchemy that takes place within them affects nations and economies, politics and history, and of course human relationships. There is proof of it in Dastarkhwan, Claire Chambers's anthology of essays, stories and recipes supplied by some of the region's most well-loved writers, historians and chefs. An unexpected revelation awaits Nadeem Aslam in a London restaurant as he yearns for a special delicacy from Pakistan. Kaiser Haq takes us from the foods of his rural Bangladeshi to the Dhaka street food of 2020. Meanwhile Indian masterchef Sadaf Hussain recounts how the samosa came to be paired with chai, and of his own newly discovered love for the beverage. Sanam Maher uncovers the fascinating history of the burger's arrival in Pakistani restaurants. Uzma Aslam Khan tells the tale of a young time-travelling daughter mourning the death of her confectioner father. And Gulla puts his heart into making the perfect Kashmiri nadroo yakhni but is taken aback by a hairy surprise in Asiya Zahoor's story 'The Hairy Curry'. A multitude of flavours blend with love, joy, grief, regret and nostalgia in this book which is not only a beautiful collection of food writing, but also a rich helping of the histories and cultures of Muslim South Asia and its diasporas. With a Foreword by Bina Shah and an Afterword by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley.

Food Writing from Muslim South Asia

Dastarkhwan

Indrani Karmakar

Kristina Diprose

Storying Relationships explores the sexual lives of young British Muslims in their own words and through their own stories. It finds engaging and surprising stories in a variety of settings: when young people are chatting with their friends; conversing more formally within families and communities; scribbling in their diaries; and writing blogs, poems and books to share or publish. These stories challenge stereotypes about Muslims, who are frequently portrayed as unhappy in love and sexually different. The young people who emerge in this book, contradicting racist and Islamophobic stereotypes, are assertive and creative, finding and making their own ways in matters of the body and the heart. Their stories – about single life, meeting and dating, pressure and expectations, sex, love, marriage and dreams – are at once specific to the young British Muslims who tell them, and resonant reflections of human experience.

Young British Muslims Speak and Write about Sex and Love

Storying Relationships

This book is the sequel to Britain Through Muslim Eyes and examines contemporary novelistic representations of and by Muslims in Britain. It builds on studies of the five senses and ‘sensuous geographies’ of postcolonial Britain, and charts the development since 1988 of a fascinating and important body of fiction by Muslim-identified authors. It is a selective literary history, exploring case-study novelistic representations of and by Muslims in Britain to allow in-depth critical analysis through the lens of sensory criticism. It argues that, for authors of Muslim heritage in Britain, writing the senses is often a double-edged act of protest. Some of the key authors excoriate a suppression or cover-up of non-heteronormativity and women’s rights that sometimes occurs in Muslim communities. Yet their protest is especially directed at secular culture’s ocularcentrism and at successive British governments’ efforts to surveil, control, and suppress Muslim bodies.

Making Sense of Contemporary British Muslim Novels

What does it mean to be a writer of Muslim heritage in the UK today? Is there such a thing as "Muslim fiction"? In a collection of revealing new interviews, Claire Chambers talks to writers including Tariq Ali, Ahdaf Soueif, Hanif Kureishi, and Abdulrazak Gurnah to discuss the impact that their Muslim heritage has had on their writing, and to argue that this body of writing is some of the most important and politically engaged fiction of recent years. From literary techniques and influences to the political and cultural debates that matter to Muslims in Britain and beyond -- such as the hijab, the war on terror and the Rushdie affair -- these thirteen interviews challenge the idea of a monolithic voice for Islam in Britain. Instead, together they paint a picture of the diversity of voices creating "British Muslim fictions" which ultimately enriches the cultural, social and political landscape of contemporary Britain.

Claire Chambers

About

Books

Join the club