The Feast of the Nine Virgins

"Born in Bombay, raised in Mombasa, married in Kampala, educated in London, worked in Tehran, lived in New York, then Stuttgart, then Hong Kong, and died in Vancouver....where was this person actually from? Where is anyone from these days?"
Opening lines of The Feast of the Nine Virgins, featuring a miserly shopkeeper in small town East Africa, a 19th century Indian courtesan behind a veil, a multi-millionaire determinedly spending every last penny on a lavish film. An elegant young man reduced to cleaning toilets. Lusty musicians and sulky starlets. And an oppressed widow who prays to get away from it all...
A novel based in British East Africa during the 1950s and 60s and in London during the 1990s. It is a powerful exploration of religious and cultural contradictions seen through the eyes of an eight-year old. But are the characters really who we think they are?
"Jameela Siddiqi writes from the inside in the inter-ethnic caste order that was East Africa..."