Blues from the Malabar Coast: stories

The twelve linked stories in this debut collection (winner of the QWF McAuslan First Book Award for 2002) encompass five generations, three continents, and about forty years. Modern times force the members of a South Indian family to scatter; home is a teeming, comfortable womb from which almost all the family are eventually ejected into an implacably changing world. Through their narratives Warriar has depicted the painful but necessary processes of growing up, emigration, alienation, and adjustment that so many have experienced in moving from older societies to newer ones. – Jill Rollins