Chef | Bloomsbury USA

Chef

A Novel

By Jaspreet Singh

An award-winning debut novel—a lyrical journey into memory, and into the depths of a conflicted region, for fans of Michael Ondaatje, John Banville, and Rohinton Mistry.

Kirpal Singh is riding the slow train to Kashmir. With India passing by his window, he reflects on his destination, which is also his past: a military camp to which he has not returned for fourteen years.

Kirpal, called Kip, is shy and not yet twenty when he arrives for the first time at General Kumar's camp, nestled in the shadow of the Siachen Glacier. At twenty thousand feet, the glacier makes a forbidding battlefield; its crevasses claimed the body of Kip's father. Kip becomes an apprentice under the camp's chef, Kishen, a fiery mentor who guides him toward the heady spheres of food and women.

In this place of contradictions, erratic violence, and extreme temperatures, Kip learns to prepare local dishes and delicacies from around the globe. Even as months pass, Kip, a Sikh, feels secure in his allegiance to India, firmly on the right side of this interminable conflict. Then, one muggy day, a Pakistani "terrorist" with long, flowing hair is swept up on the banks of the river and changes everything.

Mesmeric, mournful, and intensely lyrical, Chef is a brave and compassionate debut about hope, love, and memory set against the devastatingly beautiful, war-scarred backdrop of occupied Kashmir.

Reviews for Chef :

“[A] luminous novel… Jaspreet Singh creates a swirl of sensual allusions, from the herbs and spices of Indian cooking, to the silken allure of women Kip dares not touch, to the withering heat of the subcontinent and the unearthly cold of the Kashmiri peaks. The sensuality adorns without obscuring the solemn core of the story.” —Boston Globe

"An artful and mostly beautifully poised indictment of the shameful role of India in the political and human-rights hell that is Kashmir now… The great strength of this brave book is its technique of indirection in imparting information to the reader. Singh comes at things aslant, seemingly casually; when their importance is revealed, it comes to the unsuspecting reader with the weight and shock of an unsuspected explosion."—Neel Mukherjee, writer and reviewer for the NYT, Boston Review, and Time magazine

Chef by Jaspreet Singh: A widely praised debut novel narrated by Kirpal Singh, called Kip, as he travels by train to Kashmir. He was twenty on his first trip to General Kumar's camp, in the shadow of the Siachen glacier, where he apprenticed under the camp's chef Kishen. He learns to create wonderful dishes from around the world. His life is thrown into chaos on the day he meets a supposed terrorist woman being held in the camp. Lots of lovely descriptions and it's nice to read a novel set in India not in the warm regions. Megan Sullivan, Bookdwarf (Megan's a buyer at the Harvard Bookstore.)

Chef is included in Publishers Weekly's "The Books on Foodies' Beach Blanket" list.

“Like the people of India, the country’s food varies from region to region, with no simple consensus on how to prepare anything. But in Jaspreet Singh’s outstanding debut novel, as the characters learn to understand the origins of their food, they begin to understand each other… Quintessentially Indian, Chef is a book that eschews complex prose in favor of authenticity. Touching in its deft handling of Kip’s journey into maturity, Chef helps its readers realize that true understanding comes when you recognize not only how people are alike, but also how they are different.”—Bookpage.com

“[Singh] writes lyrically… The rippling effects of religious and cultural prejudice infuse this whole, complex story, leaving no character in Singh’s poetic, thought-provoking tale untouched.”—Booklist

“Serves up the memories both delicious and bitter… Singh adroitly blends lyrical accounts of Kip’s past with sensual renderings of the cold climate and piquant cuisine.”—Library Journal