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A review by scribepub
The Parcel by Anosh Irani
The material can be desolating, but Irani generates plenty of black comic detail, evoking the vividness and moral ambiguity of the best Indian noir.’
Cameron Woodhead, The Saturday Age, Pick of the Week
The Parcel is a magnificent novel, with powerfully imagined characters who yanked me into their lives from the first page and would not let go of me until the last. It is bold, bawdy, tender, funny, sorrowful, all that life is made up of, and when I did reach the end I felt abandoned.
Anita Rau Badami, Author of The Hero’s Walk
Immersive and devastating, The Parcel is a searing tale of personal transformation amid toxic patriarchy. Madhu is at once pathetic and honourable, despicable and mighty — and imbued with such complexity, Irani brings dignity to all the transgender sex-workers of India.
Rajith Savandasa, Author of Ruins
Harrowing, enraging, unexpectedly humorous, and also profoundly sad, The Parcel is a haunting work of fiction that illuminates the ways in which history, both political and personal, pervades the present day.
Lauren B. David, Trevor Ferguson, and Pasha Malla (2016 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury)
As engrossing as any thriller, Anosh Irani’s fourth novel offers readers so much more … The Parcel captivates with its vividly rendered characters and commands the reader’s attention by way of unnerving — and at times profoundly disturbing — portraiture of an abject group at the bottom of an already denigrated community at the heart of India’s booming financial hub, Mumbai … Irani’s compassion for these discarded souls, and the assertion of their essential dignity, renders them simultaneously touching and distressing.
Quill & Quire Starred Review
Part of the way this excellent book heals such a sprawling, horrifying reality is with beauty and religious depth.
The Globe and Mail
Deeply etched in man’s inhumanity to man and his capacity for both depravity and redemption.
Courier Mail
Irani’s portrait of Madhu and her community is tender and heroic, comic and tragic, dignified and destitute all at once.
The Skinny
The Parcel is such a fantastically moving novel … one of the most heartbreaking and fascinating novels I’ve read all year.
Lonesome Reader(blog)
Madhu is an ambiguous figure in many ways, and Irani delves deeply into her sad past among a world of outcasts. Pulling its readers’ sympathies in conflicting directions, The Parcel is a challenging novel, sharp and uncompromisingly written.
Sunday Herald
Cameron Woodhead, The Saturday Age, Pick of the Week
The Parcel is a magnificent novel, with powerfully imagined characters who yanked me into their lives from the first page and would not let go of me until the last. It is bold, bawdy, tender, funny, sorrowful, all that life is made up of, and when I did reach the end I felt abandoned.
Anita Rau Badami, Author of The Hero’s Walk
Immersive and devastating, The Parcel is a searing tale of personal transformation amid toxic patriarchy. Madhu is at once pathetic and honourable, despicable and mighty — and imbued with such complexity, Irani brings dignity to all the transgender sex-workers of India.
Rajith Savandasa, Author of Ruins
Harrowing, enraging, unexpectedly humorous, and also profoundly sad, The Parcel is a haunting work of fiction that illuminates the ways in which history, both political and personal, pervades the present day.
Lauren B. David, Trevor Ferguson, and Pasha Malla (2016 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury)
As engrossing as any thriller, Anosh Irani’s fourth novel offers readers so much more … The Parcel captivates with its vividly rendered characters and commands the reader’s attention by way of unnerving — and at times profoundly disturbing — portraiture of an abject group at the bottom of an already denigrated community at the heart of India’s booming financial hub, Mumbai … Irani’s compassion for these discarded souls, and the assertion of their essential dignity, renders them simultaneously touching and distressing.
Quill & Quire Starred Review
Part of the way this excellent book heals such a sprawling, horrifying reality is with beauty and religious depth.
The Globe and Mail
Deeply etched in man’s inhumanity to man and his capacity for both depravity and redemption.
Courier Mail
Irani’s portrait of Madhu and her community is tender and heroic, comic and tragic, dignified and destitute all at once.
The Skinny
The Parcel is such a fantastically moving novel … one of the most heartbreaking and fascinating novels I’ve read all year.
Lonesome Reader(blog)
Madhu is an ambiguous figure in many ways, and Irani delves deeply into her sad past among a world of outcasts. Pulling its readers’ sympathies in conflicting directions, The Parcel is a challenging novel, sharp and uncompromisingly written.
Sunday Herald