LoveReading Says
The story of a Bangladeshi family who all seem to lie to each other. The culture differences are lightly handled with a few eye-openers to startle one, the deceptions are huge and the whole thing bubbles with humour. It’s a charming read, perhaps a little difficult to enter, but give it a few chapters and then get swept away.
Comparison: Preethi Nair, Priya Basil (Ishq and Mushq), Vikas Swarup (Q & A).
Sarah Broadhurst
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Bitter Sweets Synopsis
In 1950s Bengal, Henna Rub, a precocious, wayward teenager, brings off a brilliant marriage to a wealthy romantic, Ricky Karim, trapping him with a web of lies that she has spun with her wheeler-dealer father.
And so on his wedding night, believing himself married to an educated, sonnet-reading, tennis-playing soul mate, Ricky is horrified to discover that his new bride is in fact a lazy, illiterate, shopkeeper's daughter.
As Ricky and Henna uneasily tolerate their loveless marriage of convenience, the way is paved for a future of double-lives and complicit deception – an unspoken family tradition that is inherited by their daughter Shona, who elopes with her secret love to live above a subcontinental sweetshop in 1980s South London.
But two decades later, with her own children grown, it is Shona who is forced to discover unpalatable truths about her loved ones, and come to terms with the lies which superficially hold the three generations of her family together . . . and which are really keeping them apart.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780330443630 |
| Publication date: |
3rd August 2007 |
| Author: |
Roopa Farooki |
| Publisher: |
Pan Macmillan |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Primary Genre |
Family Drama
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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About Roopa Farooki
Roopa Farooki was born in Lahore in Pakistan, and brought up in London. She graduated from New College, Oxford in 1995 and worked in advertising before turning to write fiction. Roopa now lives in North London and South West France with her husband, twin baby girls and two sons. Bitter Sweets, her first novel, was nominated for the Orange Award for new Writers 2007. Roopa's novels have been published internationally and translated into a dozen languages.
Author photo © Phil Richards
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