Food for Thought

Ziauddin Sardar has written extensively on Islam, science (he used to be Middle East correspondent for Nature and the New Scientist ), postmodernism, postcolonialism, multiculturalism and the complex reconciliation between Muslim belief and modernity. True to form, his latest book, Balti Britain: A Journey Through the British Asian Experience , is a simmering pot of topics that start off as an investigation into the origins of the dish that began life in the curry restaurants of Birmingham, England. It then moves into a historicized and dizzyingly wide-ranging enquiry into the origins, settlement, assimilation and cultures...