SOURCE: Sidhwa, Bapsi, and Preeti Singh. “My Place in the World.” ALIF: Journal of Comparative Poetics, no. 18 (1998): 290-98.

In the following interview, Sidhwa discusses the autobiographical elements of her fiction, her role as a postcolonial female author, her identity as a member of the Parsi community, and the use of humor in her novels.

Bapsi Sidhwa is a well known writer from Pakistan whose fiction has won fame both at home and abroad for the sensitivity with which it depicts the people and places of the South Asian sub-continent. The Bride (1983), The Crow Eaters (1982), Cracking India (1991) and An American Brat (1993) are stylistically dexterous, and so liberally laced with humor that reading them is both a pleasurable experience as well as conducive to an insight into the complexities of life in the subcontinent. For although Sidhwa sees herself as a subcontinent writer, she is a Parsi who has lived...