Claire Nicholls

Like sometimes you'll write something and it's almost like you're predicting the future.

What about for you?

Do you know where your ideas come from?

Wow.

What was the starting point?

What was the beginning spark for this?

I feel like parents listening might take comfort from this, Amitav Ghosh.

Their fussy eaters might not just be difficult, they might be remembering the diet of a past life.

All right, well, maybe we won't go down that road, but let's talk about the child in this book.

Their name is Varsha.

She's three years old, very headstrong, very bright little girl, and she lives in this very strictly vegetarian household.

Can you just give us a sense of how determined this kid is to eat some fish?

I'd love to talk some more about food.

So in the novel, the family calls in this child psychologist.

Her name is Shoma, and Shoma has an interest in past lives and is really keen to figure out what's going on with this little girl Varsha.

And she decides to set Varsha this kind of test to see how much this kid knows about fish, which she's never eaten.

So Shoma prepares these different fishes cooked in different ways and feeds them to the little girl to see if she can identify these very kind of obscure fishes and obscure dishes.

The food descriptions in this book are so mouth-watering, Amitav Ghosh.

I want to know, these are specifically Bengali foods.

What are the significance of these dishes in your own life?