Food Discourse
N. Kamala
THE TABLE IS LAID: THE OXFORD ANTHOLOGY OF SOUTH ASIAN FOOD WRITING by John Thieme and Ira Raja Oxford University Press, 2007, 384 pp., 595
March 2007, volume 31, No 3

Inspired by A.K. Ramanujan’s essay ‘Food for thought’, the present anthology of South Asian Food Writing was whipped up to respond in part to fulfil his desire for a more diachronic study of food discourse though not trying to provide ‘the social history’ that he craved for. It is diachronic only in the sense it showcases the transformations of ‘traditional notions of food in … rapidly modernizing social situations’. So it does not cover a large swathe of historical study but confines itself to throwing its net around writings both academic and fictional about food, that greatest of signifying systems, during the last and the current centuries. Including writings by very well-known authors belonging to ‘South Asia’ or rather the Indian subcontinent, which seems to nowadays always embrace a good section of the very same diaspora, it does not limit itself to musings only in English but also has a few regional offerings from Hindi, Tamil, Bangla and so on in English translations.

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