When political violence erupts in the very first chapter, as a group of armed Nepalese nationalists invade the hilltop home of a retired judge, it is teatime. The judge, a brooding old man who worked for a lifetime in the British-run Indian Civil Service, is crossly demanding "a cake or scones, macaroons or cheese straws", while "the boys" creep across his lawn. "Something sweet and something salty." The judge, who has "worked at being English with the passion of hatred", has tastes inescapably formed by his colonial training.

In the local Gymkhana dining hall he demands "roast mutton with mint sauce" and almost begs for tomato soup. When he first employs his cook, he tells him to learn a brown sauce and a white sauce: "shove the bloody white sauce on the fish and shove the bloody brown sauce on the mutton".

His most important companion is his dog, for whom the cook must concoct elaborate recipes when political unrest ends the supply of meat. "It was her stew time and the cook had boiled soy Nutrinuggets with pumpkin and a Maggi soup cube. It worried the judge that she should have to eat like this".

Meanwhile, in a parallel narrative, Biju, the son of his cook, is working illegally in the kitchens of cheap New York restaurants. His letters to his father tell of their bewildering variety. "He worked at Don Pollo – or was it The Hot Tomato? Or Ali Baba's Fried Chicken?" He knows only that if his son is cooking "English food" he must have "a higher position than if he were cooking Indian food".

The sheer ethnic confusion of New York food is beyond his ken: Biju moves from one advertised cuisine (French, Italian, Chinese, "authentic colonial") to another, though the kitchens are "Mexican, Indian, Pakistani", or "Colombian, Tunisian, Ecuadorian, Gambian". Even when he encounters supposedly Indian food it is fitted to some "fusion trend": "the goat cheese and basil samosa, the mango margarita".

What would feature in newspaper guides as a delightful, multi-cultural variety is, for Biju, a kind of gastronomic cacophony. His fellow exile Saeed cheers himself up with a reminder of East Africa: "cow peas and kingfish from the Price Chopper . . . and plantains in sugar and coconut milk". "This goo mixture smelling of hope so ripe he slathered on French bread and offered to the others".

It is appropriate that the judge lives with "the cook" (he does not get a name). Though disappointed to be working for a fellow Indian ("his father had served white men only") he has qualified with an unstoppable list of all the English puddings he can produce. ". . . applecharlotteapplebettybreadandbutterjamtartcaramelcustardtipsypuddingrumtumpuddingjamrolypolygingersteamdatepuddinglemonpancake-eggcustardorangecustard . . ."

The judge's orphaned teenage grand-daughter Sai joins the household and begins a surreptitious romance with her tutor, Gyan. When Gyan and the judge speak to each other it is with the awkwardness that only a mealtime (with the eaters stuck in their places) can dramatise. The young Nepalese teacher, with his disdain for all colonial allegiances, has to join in a repast of lamb chops with peas, potatoes and gravy.

We see the occasion through the judge's eyes, as he quizzes Gyan about his literary tastes and aggressively spears and chews his favoured grub. It is an exercise in crumbling authority. "He could tell Gyan had never eaten such food in such a manner".

Food travels strangely. The judge (his name is Jemubhai, but this is only ever used of his younger self) recalls how, as a student in chilly Cambridge, he read about the British in India, with their mock turtle soup and Yarmouth herrings shipped thousands of miles to reassure them. A century later, as winter closes in in the hills, Lola and Noni, the two beleaguered Anglophile sisters, take refuge in food.

"Oh, beautiful soup in the copper Gyako pot . . . mutton steam in their hair, rollicking shimmer of golden fat, dried mushrooms growing so slippery they'd slither down scalding before you could chomp open their muscle". Comfort is gastric.

As the Nepalese independence movement grows in strength, and the ethnic fissures in Kalimpong become clear, Lola and Noni – proud connoisseurs of Trollope and Agatha Christie and afternoon tea – become awkwardly aware of their tastes. "It did matter, buying tinned ham roll in a rice and dal country." Food focuses cultural unease. Eating makes you feel you belong, and makes you know when you do not.

John Mullan, The Guardian, 07.11.09

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/07/inheritance-loss-desai-book-club