Annie Zaidi

In this prize-winning exploration of the meaning of home, Annie Zaidi reflects on places, cultures and conflicts that shape identity.

A Memoir of Belonging and Dislocation

Bread, Cement, Cactus

Rohit Kumar

The questioner asks the question ‘is there still no place like home?’ and Annie Zaidie wrote this book as the answer. By the time the book ends, the reader finds that Annie has found her home. 

Annie’s quest to find a home is not that easy. Not because there is no place such as home or her home is lost. But because there is no hard and fast definition of ‘home’.

To find it, she has to go back to her childhood home which lies in a colony of no homes.

She tries to find it in the city where her grandparents lived. 

She tries to find it in the city where her bloodline comes from. 

She tries to find it in a language that was almost lost to her and that is almost lost to the country. 

In the end, Annie manages to find a place called home. In her quest, the reader starts pondering about her home too, ‘is there still no place like home?’

Bread, Cement, Cactus A Memoir of Belonging and Dislocation

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