Westland releases Spirits in a Spice Jar By Sarina Kamini
(Releasing on May 29, 2018)
A heartwarming journey to make sense of life, love and family, through food
For Sarina Kamini’s Kashmiri family, food is love, love is faith, and faith is family. It’s cause for total emotional devastation when, ten years after her Australian mother is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, unaddressed grief turns the spice of this young food writer’s heritage to ash and her prayers to poison. At her lowest ebb, Sarina’s dead Ammi’s typed-up cooking notes become a recipe for healing, her progress in the kitchen marked by her movement through bitterness, grief and loneliness—the daal that is too fiery and lumpen; her play with salt that pricks and burns. In teaching herself how to personalise tradition and spirituality through spice, Sarina creates space to reconsider her relationship with Hinduism and God in a way that allows room for questions. She learns forgiveness of herself for being different, and comes to accept that family means change and challenge as much as acceptance and love.
About the Author: Sarina Kamini is an Anglo-Indian author now living in a pocket of paradise in small town Western Australia. A former food writer, food editor and food critic, she has spent twenty years working in Paris, California, Edinburgh, Barcelona and Melbourne. Sarina can be found among the trees with her husband, her two sons and her dog, DJ Chips.