Seize Your Copy Chef Fashioned By Jaspreet Singh Compiled As Digital Version

first novel is told by the protagonist Kirpal in flashbacks on a train trip back to Kashmir, Kirpal has agreed to prepare the wedding feast for his former General's daughter, This is a story India of the conflict between India and Pakistan, Listen to Singh description of Beethoven'sth:", . . but I have heard the music, My fear, my fury, my joy, my melancholyeverything is embedded in this piece, The Ninth is real. It penetrates my body like smells, like food, And yet: is is solid and massive like a glacier, Shifting. Sliding, Melting. Then becoming air . " Just discovered Jaspreet Singh. 'Chef' is a quirky read and reminds me a bit in tone of Mohammed Hanif's, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, However, the points of view change and merge in a way that I found, at times, confusing, all first person, you have to focus hard to follow.
But there are some beautiful observations like:'When does a painter know that the painting of a horse is done I asked myself'.
I also learned some interesting facts, I love that Siachen means 'place where wild roses grow' in Balti, I would like to read his second novel, Helium, I could barely get through this book, It's written in a style that some would call lyrical, but for me it's too slowpaced and convoluted,
I just couldn't plod my way through and it felt like a chore to read throughpages,

I never got a good feel for the narrator's personality as we skipped through perspective and time, He doesn't engage me and I can't relate to him in any way, In the end, I didn't care about him, his dying, his relationships, his food, nothing at all,

At the end of the book I understand Kashmir and its occupation no better, I understand Kip's personality and his relationships with women no better, and the relationship between food and life seemed shallow and illformed connection.

Is there anything more insufferable than someone else's nostalgia Yes: someone else's fictional nostalgia, occasionally exacerbated by outbreaks of selfpity and blunt, ineffectual criticism of government hypocrisy.
I enjoyed imagining the food they ate, and I would very much like to try rogan josh in both Kashmiri and Hindu styles, but I think the only reason I ended up finishing this was because it always seemed like it was almost done.
Not recommended.

This book further illuminated the fact that I don't think I've ever truly enjoyed a book by a nonAmerican, nonIrish/British author.
Can someone recommend a book that will rectify this situation My sister suggested the Russians and possibly sitelinkOrhan Pamuk, and we both agree that sitelinkJunot Díaz counts as an American, even if he might not want to.
Murakami, Rushdie, Coetzee, Steig Larson hah!, and Nadine Gordimer have already been rejected the list goes on, I like Borges but I don't love him, Help.
في قطار يتجه لكشمير يستعيد الطباخ الهندي كربال سنج الذكريات
ينتقل بين الحاضر والماضي ويعيد النظر في الحياة والناس والمشاعر
وما بين أصناف التوابل والطعام يحكي الكاتب عن حال الهند وقضية كشمير
المعتقدات الدينية والحياتية. . الفساد والفقر والبؤس. . الثراء والرفاهية
الصراع الذي لا ينتهي بين الهند وباكستان على إقليم كشمير
والحروب العبثية بينهم والخسارة الانسانية لكلا الطرفين

أول رواية للكاتب الهندي جاسبرت سينج. . لغة بسيطة وسرد سلس


Through food, we learn the stories of two military cooks, The first Chef is proud Kishen, Kip's mentor, whose strength lies in international haute cuisine, His unorthodox way of asking vegetables and fruit what they wish to become, results in extraordinary dishes, But when he makes a careless mistake, even his wonderful cooking cannot save him from reassignment to the Siachen icefields, Chef's misfortune results in a promotion for Kip, Although he has learned his kitchen skills and recipes from his predecessor, there is a difference in his cooking style: Kip tries to unite Muslim and Hindu Kashmiri flavors, creating more authenticity, and one could even say unity, in his dishes.

Kip is a man whose life is shaped by others, He joins the army and obtains a posting in Kashmir, in order to feel closer to and perhaps to better understand his late father Major Iqbal Singh.
The much respected Major died in a plane crash and his body is still somewhere in the Siachen glacier, After his arrival, it is Chef Kishen who makes him a cook, In Kashmir, Kip learns of the injustice that is done to the native Kashmiri, Hindu and Muslim alike, People just like him, people who do not matter to the high command of the military nor to the rest of the world, die every day.
They sacrifice themselves, and are sacrificed by others, but their cries are silenced, He is angry at Kishen, and angry for his sake as well, Kip suffers from his inability to intervene on poor Irem's behalf, a simple Muslim woman who is treated like dirt under the Indian military's feet.
Even those who are indirectly connected to Muslim threats are disposed of, their value reduced to nothing, And at the center of his anger lies General Kumar himself,
I believe Kip, who is of Sikh origin, cut off his hair and discarded his turban as a method of protest against all the injustice done to Kashmir.
He is not just Sikh, or Indian, but also a man, a brother to the oppressed Kashmiri,
The strong sense of nostalgia, pervading every page of this book, appealed to me the most, I enjoy stories in which strong emotions are connected to the past, precious memories that make clear how displaced the protagonist is in the here and now, and how he or she can only exist peacefully in the past for which so much longing is felt.
I also liked the importance of food in the novel, of how food was used to convey messages and feelings,
As for the weaker parts of the book: I could not help wondering what had happened to Kip during his years away from Kashmir.
Did he put his life on hold, waiting for the General to reach out to him Or is there no ulterior reason for the way he wasted away his life Kip's long waiting made his return all the more ominous, but I have to admit I felt slightly let down by the ending of the book.
I received this Advanced Reading Copy from Bloomsbury via Goodreads FirstReads program, :
Awardwinning IndianCanadian author Jaspreet Singh has written an intensely compelling story of Kip, a Sikh, who becomes an apprentice chef to military chef, Kishen, a mentor obsessed with food and women in the Kashmir area, site of the border wars between Pakistan and India.
Full of the delight of good cooking and food, Kip must also deal with unpleasant things: unstable governments, military might, prison, and human rights issues.
Told in flashbacks as Kip returns to Kashmiryears later when asked to be the Chef for his former General's daughter's wedding, traveling on the same train he had traveled previously, Kip reflects on his former mentor and how his life and feelings about India/Pakistan have changed in the intervening years.


The border wars and human rights issues reminded me of Mohammed Hanif's sitelinkA Case of Exploding Mangoes, while the hospital scenes reminded me of Pat Barker's sitelinkLife Class, and the military instability made me think of Russell

Banks'sitelinkThe Darling: A Novel.
Starting with the cover, this book is wonderful! The cover is breathtakingly beautiful and just transports you to northern India, The story, told by Kip, is simple in its telling, but at the same time shows the complexity of human relationships,

I loved this book and highly recommend it, If you liked "Buddha's Orphans" by S, Upadhyay or "A Fine Balance" by R, Mistry, then this book is for you! Full disclosure for purposes of this review: I won this on the Goodreads giveaways, which was very cool because I really wanted to read this after hearing an interview with Jaspreet Singh on BBC's The Strand.



I have never been to India, I've watched Michael Wood's series about it, but never actually set foot there, I also know nothing about Indian literature outside of legends, so I have no idea how this book compares with current Indian literary product.


It is an affecting and moving book, The kind of book that sticks with you after you have read it, The book is a travel to Kashmir, a travel into memory and the pain/effects of the past as well as a ode to food and the act of cooking.


Kip travels back to Kashmir years after leaving, He travels back so he can cook the wedding feast for the daughter of the General, whom Kip served under during Kip's time in the army.
As he travels to Kashmir and deals with the news of his impending death due to cancer, Kip takes the reader on a journay into his memory by telling a story about his service in Kashmir the section of India that India and Pakistan fight over.
Over the course of the story, the reader gets a sense of the conflict, the price of the conflict, and an idea of modern India in particular with the characters on the train.
If you pay attention to the news, at least two of the couples will be currently revelent, What also occurs is a slight sense of hope mingled with bittersweatness and sorrow, Singh doesn't care about which country is in the right he simply focuses on how the battle effects those who live a generation removed from parition.


Singh's prose is at times poetic: "She is so beautiful, I can't point at a concrete detail of her face and say that is why she is beautiful, I just turn away my eyes", More importantly, Singh has mastered the way of showing the reading without saying more than should be said, His silences speak just as loudly as his words, His recipes speak as loudly as the thoughts, and the description speaks the loudest of all,



نبذة الناشر "منقولة بتصرف":
أخذت أحداث الرواية مجراها في منطقة كشمير والتي ظلت مضطربة منذ تأسيس باكستان بانفصالها عن الهند فقد كان الخلاف بينهما دائم خلف من وراءه حروب وصراعات, . وقد قدم سنغ في روايته الشيف على لسان أبطاله مونولوجيا داخليا مؤثرا عن الذكرى والآمال المطمة عن صراع السلطة وخديعة الحكام الخيبات والحب والحياة من أجل الآخر.
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عمل جميل وتجربة موفقة لي أخذت أجول في كشمير وتفاصيلها بين مطابخ الحكام سمعت تلك الأصداء والصراعات "رغم ظني بأن الرواية ستركز على هذا الجانب لكنها كانت سياسية بشكل ما صدمني"
أخذني البطل كب كربال لأعيش لوهلة بين شخوص الرواية وأتذوق القلق مرارة الحياة والحب الغريب الذي وجدته بين السطور. . رواية عميقة جدا استطعت إنهاءها في جلسات متقطعة. .
وقد كنت متعطشة لمعرفة النهاية بين روبيا وكربال بعد حزني على آرم المسكينة. . لكنني شعرت بالانقطاع المفاجئ مع رحيل الحافلة الأخيرة وعلى متنها روبيا. .
فالنهاية لم تكن متوقعة مما أشعرني بالانقطاع والغرابة
الرواية مليئة بالتفاصيل والسرد العميق لذا لا أرشحه لكل قارئ
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Insta: metaqtr تقييماتالميم Singh's awardwinning novel is a poem of a book reminiscent of Ondaatje'sThe English Patient, Set in Kashmir, on the border between India and Pakistan, Chef tells the story in retrospect of a young man's enlistment into the Indian Army and his training and early career as chef to one of the army's generals.
Exploring several themes simultaneously the nature of love, the Kashmiri conflict, racism, the relationship between fathers and children Singh keeps the reader's head spinning with rich layers of description and seemingly innocuous plot developments.


Much like Ondaatje's work, Chef seems simple but then bursts into a complex narrative that lingers like the aftertaste of a particularly good curry.
While not as foodcentered as several other recent books, Kip's focus on cooking and food gives an interesting nuance to his tale, In the end, the reader is not entirely sure whose story this is: Kip's, his mentor Chef Kishen's, or the conflict itself, .