Book Review

The Flavours of Nationalism: Recipes for Love, Hate and Friendship by Nandita Haksar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The introduction to the book is titled “The Justice of Eating”, which takes its name from the poem “The Great Table Cloth” by the Communist Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. Through this poem, Neruda expresses his wish for a world free of hunger. Nandita Haksar quotes the poet to bring forward the still pertinent question of inequality, when it comes to accessibility of food in Indian society. That the farmers continue to commit suicide, that some of those unprivileged go without square meals for days, that the social fabric is still marred by discrimination and oppression practiced towards people with respect to their food choices because of their caste/class/religious/regional identities, are some of the questions that the author grapples with in this book.

I reviewed the book for magazine Kitaab here :

https://kitaab.org/2020/08/26/the-fla...


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