HarperCollins India is delighted to announce the upcoming publication of a deliciously irreverent, fun and fabulous book to mark the 75th birthday of one of India's most well-known and beloved writers – Insatiable: My Hunger for Life by Shobhaa Dé
Releasing on 17 January 2023 by HarperCollins India
NEW DELHI, Jan. 7, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — HarperCollins India is delighted to announce the upcoming publication of a deliciously irreverent, fun and fabulous book to mark the 75th birthday of one of India’s most well-known and beloved writers, Shobhaa Dé. Releasing on 17th January 2023, Insatiable: My Hunger for Life is Shobhaa Dé’s memoir about the year leading up to her landmark birthday. Written in her candid, inimitable style, this book is a unique take on life and celebrating it, narrated through stories and anecdotes around some of India’s most loved culinary dishes, festivals, traditions and her travels. Covering a wide range of topics, the author talks about ageing, shares advice with younger women, talks about travelling solo, and reveals some of the best kept food secrets of celebrities, artists, and well known personalities, making this a book which cannot be missed.
Talking about the book, Shobhaa Dé says, “Insatiable is a celebration of life in all its complexities and with all the fault lines. It’s about pleasure, joy, loss, the abundance and opulence of possibility. I wrote it spontaneously in a playful, irreverent mood to chronicle and mark a significant birthday. It’s an authentic, honest and intimate representation of my far-from-conventional life, my deeply invested relationship with people, with food, with the unexpected, with crazy, emotional family celebrations, besides the affectionate recollections of the tumultuous friendships that have enriched and challenged every moment over 75 years! Don’t stop me now!”
Trisha Bora, Senior Commissioning Editor at HarperCollins India, says, “I’m thrilled to be publishing one of India’s most beloved writers – someone whom I have admired through the years. Insatiable is different – it is as light as a well-made soufflé, bubbling like a glass of champagne and profound like the days before the monsoon. Shobhaa takes us into her home, to the chatter around her dining table and kitchen, her travels and her engagements with her friends and family. You won’t be able to stop reading this incredible book!”
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
“Shobhaa Dé has been fearless, frank, direct, straightforward, explicit, unambiguous and unvarnished, both as a person and a celebrated journalist and writer! Insatiable—her voracious and unquenchable thirst for more could not have been better described than in the title of her book. May the accolades for her endeavour never end!”—Amitabh Bachchan
“Shobhaa Dé is a wonderfully inventive writer whose pioneering experiments with Indian English led to the birth of a whole new idiom of desi expression. She is also a woman of unflinching courage who has stood up to bullies and chauvinists of many kinds. She is a national treasure.”—Amitav Ghosh
“I grew up reading Shobhaa Dé’s columns in newspapers. She exposed me to a new way of seeing the world. Then, years later, I met her. First as a fan. Then as her friend. And I still read her, enjoying the way she explains the world to me: rooted, grounded, yet adventurous and fun.”—Devdutt Pattanaik
“Shobhaa Dé is a phenomenon. She is not just insatiable, she’s completely unstoppable, and as this chatty, witty, perky book shows, she remains one of the most vivacious writers at work in India today.”—William Dalrymple
ABOUT THE BOOK
“I promise not to be three things – profound, pedantic and pretentious,” says Shobhaa Dé as she begins her heart-warming book.
It’s a promise India’s most beloved writer delivers on in her irreverent memoir about the year leading up to her landmark seventy-fifth birthday. Quintessential exuberance and keen observations firmly in place, she tells readers about travelling solo, feasting (and fasting) with family and friends, the triumphs and losses that accompany ageing, the vagaries and vulnerabilities of being a writer and, above all, how food connects people in the most unexpected places and delightful ways.
From where to find the most delicious lassi in Jaipur, her obsession with kasundi and conversations with a Nobel Laureate who is a gourmet to M.F. Husain’s last food khwaish and what’s served at Aamir Khan’s dinner table, Shobhaa takes the readers into the dining rooms of politicians, artists and celebrities, to festivals and parties and other social events, and, more privately, into her home, where food is always the prime subject of conversation.
In Insatiable, Shobhaa reminds people of the many delights and disappointments that the banquet of life offers, even as she examines the shared emotional hunger for happiness and love that binds everyone together.
Hardback I 304pp I Rs. 699
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shobhaa Dé, voted by Reader’s Digest as one of ‘India’s Most Trusted People’ and by Daily News and Analysis as one of the ’50 Most Powerful Women in India‘, is a bestselling author and a popular social commentator. Her works, both fiction and non-fiction, have been featured in comparative literature courses at universities in India and abroad. Her writing has been translated into many languages including Hindi, Marathi, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish, among others. Shobhaa lives in Mumbai with her family.
About HarperCollins India
HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian Subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2,000 titles across 10 imprints. Its authors have won almost every major literary award including the Man Booker Prize, JCB Prize, DSC Prize, New India Foundation Award, Atta Galatta Prize, Shakti Bhatt Prize, Gourmand Cookbook Award, Publishing Next Award, Tata Literature Live! Award, Gaja Capital Business Book Prize, BICW Award, Sushila Devi Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world including Harvard University Press, Gallup Press, Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet. HarperCollins India is now the recipient of five Publisher of the Year Awards – In 2021 and 2015 at the Publishing Next Industry Awards, and in 2021, 2018 and 2016 at Tata Literature Live. HarperCollins India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers.
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