Harper Collins India has announced the publication of a deliciously irreverent, fun, and fabulous book to mark the 75th birthday of Shobhaa De. Releasing on 17 January 2023, Insatiable: My Hunger for Life is Shobhaa De’s memoir about the year leading up to her landmark birthday. Written in her candid, inimitable style, this book is a unique take on life and celebrating it, narrated through stories and anecdotes around some of India’s most loved culinary dishes, festivals, traditions, and her travels. Covering a wide range of topics, the author talks about ageing, shares advice with younger women, talks about travelling solo, and reveals some of the best kept food secrets of celebrities, artists, and well known personalities, making this a book which cannot be missed. Talking about the book, Shobhaa De says, “Insatiable is a celebration of life in all its complexities and with all the fault lines. It’s about pleasure, joy, loss, the abundance and opulence of possibility. I wrote it spontaneously in a playful, irreverent mood to chronicle and mark a significant birthday. It’s an authentic, honest and intimate representation of my far-from-conventional life, my deeply invested relationship with people, with food, with the unexpected, with crazy, emotional family celebrations, besides the affectionate recollections of the tumultuous friendships that have enriched and challenged every moment over 75 years! Don’t stop me now.” Trisha Bora, Senior Commissioning Editor at HarperCollins India, says, “I’m thrilled to be publishing one of India’s most beloved writers, someone whom I have admired through the years. Insatiable is different—it is as light as a well-made souffle, bubbling like a glass of champagne, and profound like the days before the monsoon. Shobhaa takes us into her home, to the chatter around her dining table and kitchen, her travels, and h e r e n g age m e nt s with her friends and family. You won’t be able to stop reading this incredible book!” “Shobhaa De has been fearless, frank, direct, straightforward, explicit, unambiguous, and unvarnished, both as a person and as a celebrated journalist and writer. Insatiable–her voracious and unquenchable thirst for more could not have been better described than in the title of her book. May the accolades for her endeavour never end,” said Amitabh Bachchan. “Shobhaa De is a wonderfully inventive writer whose pioneering experiments with Indian English led to the birth of a whole new idiom of desi expression. She is also a woman of unflinching courage who has stood up to bullies and chauvinists of many kinds. She is a national treasure,” said Amitav Ghosh. “I grew up reading Shobhaa De’s columns in newspapers. She exposed me to a new way of seeing the world. Then, years later, I met her. First as a fan. Then as her friend. And I still read her, enjoying the way she explains the world to me: rooted, grounded, yet adventurous and fun,” said Devdutt Pattanaik. “Shobhaa De is a phenomenon. She is not just insatiable, she’s completely unstoppable, and as this chatty, witty, perky book shows, she remains one of the most vivacious writers at work in India today,” said William Dalrymple. “I promise not to be three things – profound, pedantic, and pretentious,” says Shobhaa De as she begins her heart-warming book. It’s a promise India’s most beloved writer delivers on in her irreverent memoir about the year leading up to her landmark 75th birthday. Quintessential exuberance and keen observations firmly in place, she tells readers about travelling solo, feasting (and fasting) with family and friends, the triumphs and losses that accompany ageing, the vagaries and vulnerabilities of being a writer, and, above all, how food connects people in the most unexpected places and delightful ways. From where to find the most delicious lassi in Jaipur to her obsession with kasundi and conversations with a Nobel Laureate who is a gourmet to M.F. Husain’s last food khwaish and what’s served at Aamir Khan’s dinner table, Shobhaa takes the readers into the dining rooms of politicians, artists, and celebrities, to festivals and parties and other social events, and, more privately, into her home, where food is always the prime subject of conversation. In Insatiable, Shobhaa reminds people of the many delights and disappointments that the banquet of life offers, even as she examines the shared emotional hunger for happiness and love that binds everyone together. Shobhaa De, voted by Reader’s Digest as one of ‘India’s Most Trusted People’ and by Daily News and Analysis as one of the ‘50 Most Powerful Women in India’, is a bestselling author and a popular social commentator. Her works, both fiction and non-fiction, have been featured in comparative literature courses at universities in India and abroad. Her writing has been translated into many languages, including Hindi, Marathi, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish, among others. Shobhaa lives in Mumbai with her family.
