Poet, journalist and dancer Tishani Doshi delved into her own family’s history to write The Pleasure Seekers, her debut novel. Babo Patel, a young Gujarati man, moves to London in 1968 and falls in love with Siân Jones, a Welsh woman.
His parents – Prem and Trishala – oppose the match, and then relent, but with one condition: the couple must move to Madras, where Babo grew up. Babo and Siân then have two daughters, Mayuri and Bean.
In 2017, this family saga acquires additional leverage as a history of India’s recent past.
In his review of the novel in The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw writes that The Pleasure Seekers is, “...a meandering family saga which reproduces the conventions of the postcolonial novel with its crosstown cultural traffic, and is obviously influenced by Rushdie, Mistry and Smith...a seductive and lovable novel.”
A review in The Independent says, “The Pleasure Seekers celebrates the protean adaptability of family. Doshi poses the exile’s age-old question: where is my home? Her writing, never less than poignant, sparkles with exuberance...Doshi runs the intimate family plot against the dire narrative of public events – Bhopal, assassinations, the Republic Day earthquake.”
Published in 2010.
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