Reinventing the veil

I’d have plucked Love in a Headscarf (LIH) off any shelf in the world had it not been for R robbing me of the pleasure by plain handing me the book and demanding a review. Why?

Love in a Headscarf 
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed
Amaryllis; Rs295; Pp 288

Cute pink cover, neon blue embossed type, my kind of unpretentious intellectual come-hither. And I’d have read it even if I weren’t reviewing it. Why? One riveting line in the blurb. “At the age of thirteen, I knew that I was destined to marry John Travolta.” That did it. It accosted me like a childhood friend in a street corner in Antigua or Jhunjhunu and dragged me into the book, hurtling me down 300-odd pages.

Old man Aristotle would have shot himself had he read LIH. After all he carps about plot, and here all the plot you get is a ‘man hunt’ in slow motion. But to call author Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s debut novel just another don’t-want-to-be-single-desperately-want-to-mingle lit is to be decoyed by the cute pink.

Full report here Hindustan Times