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A Novel
by Tishani Doshi
Paperback Original: When Babo Patel met Siân Jones in London, it was instant love: a full-body burning not fully accounted for by the peppermint schnapps. Babo's Indian parents disapproved of his cream-skinned, auburn-haired love. And then they disapproved unless the couple moved back to Madras. So here they are: Babo and Siân and their girls, Mayuri and Bean, all together in their house with orange and black gates. As the twentieth century rolls along, the Patel-Joneses navigate their way through the uncharted territory of "hybrid" family life. There’s the hustle and bustle of Babo’s nearby relatives; the sometimes-summers in Wales with Siân's family; and those everywhere perils of first love and lost innocence and old age that raise the big question: What do we make of the spaces our loved ones leave behind?
Tishani Doshi, a prizewinning poet, plunges into fiction for the first time with this tender and uplifting debut inspired by the lives of her Welsh mother and Indian father. With rich feeling and dazzling language, Doshi evokes both Zadie Smith and Rohinton Mistry as she captures the quirks and calamities of one unusual clan in a story of identity, family, belonging, and all-transcending love.
"[A] rich debut... Doshi tackles some heavy issues, such as the difficulties of leaving family behind and the ongoing repercussions of that choice, with intelligence and grace." - Booklist
"In this luminous comedy of four generations of Patels, poet and dancer Tishani Doshi weaves together the worlds of India and Wales, her twin inheritance... [it] charms its readers and indulges its people." - The Independent (UK)
"This is an intensely charming and sweet-natured book, though some notes are struck more confidently than others....I had the sense that, despite her humorous and compassionate insights into the travails of their marriage, and quite apart from what the biographical reality may or may not have been, there are some messy, inglorious banalities of married life that remain out of reach of her fictional imagination. These are minor worries for such a seductive and lovable novel: it is about pleasure sought and, more importantly, pleasure found." - The Guardian (UK)
"I read this book almost in one sitting, and became completely engaged by the characters. I suffered those horrible, familiar pangs of literary envy." - Louis de Bernières, author of Corelli's Mandolin
"This is a captivating, delightful novel. I was totally engaged by Tishani Doshi's people and by their world, and the language often rises - when speaking of the great matters, life, death, and above all love - to powerful metaphorical heights." - Salman Rushdie
This information about The Pleasure Seekers was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tishani Doshi is a poet and dancer based in Madras, India. Her first collection of poetry, Countries of the Body, was awarded the Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection in 2006. The Pleasure Seekers is her first novel. Visit Tishani at tishanidoshi.com
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