Awards
Runner-up for the Sunday Times (South Africa) Fiction Award
Synopses & Reviews
Set in India and South Africa,
The Wedding joins Ismet Nassin, a clerk of modest prospects from Bombay, and the village beauty he marries on the very day he spies her from the window of his train. Matrimony happens fast, love lags behind. Khateja is willful, difficult, and misanthropic—in short, highly desirable. Ismet is in for the battle of his life.
Based upon the story of his grandparents and his own upbringing in Durban, South Africa, Imraan Coovadias The Wedding is a brilliantly funny and tender first novel—an alternately poignant and hilarious story about the choices we make and the homes that we build.
The Wedding is a witty and wonderful subcontinental version of The Taming of the Shrew.
Review
"The domestic animus runs so deep that we're reminded of a subcontinental 'Lockhorns,' except that this book is much funnier and more tender." Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
"[A] wildly imaginative slapstick romp." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"Both hilarious and heartbreaking, this is a story of love and loathing at first sight....The quarrels are the best part of the book, and Ismet's mother's complaining monologues, chatty and vituperative, demand to be read aloud." Hazel Rochman, Booklist
Review
"As soon as one reads the first few pages of [The Wedding], the cadences of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy immediately come to mind....This sharp but poignant tale highlights the universal difficulties of compatibility and making one's way in the world." Library Journal
Review
"[A] side-splitting novel." Boston Herald
Synopsis
Based upon family stories Imraan Coovadia heard as a child growing up in South Africa, The Wedding is the story of the serendipitous meeting and hilariously awkward marriage of modest Ismet baggy, shambling Bombay clerk that he is and the sharp-tongued village beauty Khateja. Though she agrees to marry Ismet, Khateja also resolves to make his life as miserable as possible. Told from the unsparing but affectionate point of view of Ismet and Khateja's grandson, The Wedding crackles with verbal fireworks, a bittersweet battle of the sexes that is ultimately about love, fate, and the choices that become our home.
About the Author
Born in Durban, South Africa, Imraan Coovadia attended Harvard College and has lived in the United States for twelve years. The Wedding is his first novel. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.