Sabah, a young American woman, sets out to discover her identity and heritage in India, only to stumble into a demi-monde of decadently upper-class Indians.
Meanwhile, her ageing Bombay movie-star uncle and his formerly docile wife search through London and New York for their lovelorn gay son.
Across three continents, arranged marriages bursting at the seams, and all the glitz of Bollywood, Bombay Talkie is the story of people whose lives span several cultures, but who don't quite belong in any of them.
Through this complex family saga, Ameena Meer sends up stereotypes of East and West with irony, wit and compassion.
Ameena Meer is a writer and journalist and a former copywriter for Calvin Klein. She lives in New York. Bombay Talkie is her first novel.
An exuberant comedy of the often painful meeting of Indian and Western manners
Sunday Times
Feisty, sexy, moving, as if Merchant-Ivory swallowed The Face? New Statesman & Society
?Meer's characters are all well drawn, each deracinated in some degree and each nursing a concomitant hopelessness.
The novel has wit, irony and much sadness
Boston Globe