The Paradise of Food

A landmark Urdu classic translated for the first time Khalid Jawed is one of the most original and extraordinary writers in Urdu today. The Paradise of Food is an Urdu classic known for its radical, experimental form and savage and dark honesty. It tells the story of a middle-class Muslim joint family over a span of fifty years. As India – and Islamic culture – hardens, the narrator, whose life we follow from boyhood to old age, struggles to find a place for himself, at odds in his home and in the world outside. But to describe the novel in its plot is to do its originality no justice. In this profoundly daring work – tense, mysterious, even unfathomable on occasion – Jawed builds an atmosphere of gloom and grotesqueness to draw out his themes. And in doing so he penetrates deep into the dark heart of middle-class Muslims today. Superbly translated, The Paradise of Food is a novel like no other.

Khalid Jawed is one of the leading Urdu novelists today. He is the author of fifteen works of fiction and non-fiction, and is a recipient of the Katha Award, the Upendranath Ashk Award and the UP Urdu Academy Award. He is a professor at Jamia Millia Islamia University.