Bombay

Satirical columnist and best selling author of Oh! Those Parsis!, Berjis Desai is back with his first novel Towers of Silence, which chronicles roughly a hundred years of Parsi clans in British and independent India, takes several cues from the Latin American tradition of magical realism. The sleepy town of Navsari, home to the Bhamgaras, is much like Marquez’s Macondo. The novel follows the Bhamgaras as they deal with pastoral chores, dwindling finances, lecherous cousins, insipid husbands, dullard progeny, family…

While reading about you, I noticed that some people describe you as Egyptian American, others call you Italian American, and some introduce you as Jewish American. What resonates most with you? Yes, it’s a bit funny, isn’t it? First of all, I was born in Egypt but I was never Egyptian. I became Italian when I was probably 10 or 11 years old, and I didn’t even know Italian at the time that we became Italian. And then I lived in Italy but eventually my Italian citizenship lapsed entirely. I can no longer retrieve it since…