SOURCE: Rahman, Tariq. Review of Ice-Candy-Man, by Bapsi Sidhwa. World Literature Today 62, no. 4 (autumn 1988): 732-33.

In the following review, Rahman offers a positive assessment of Ice-Candy-Man, praising the novel's sophisticated and effective narrative techniques.

Ice-Candy-Man is Bapsi Sidhwa's third novel, following The Crow Eaters (1978) and The Bride (1983; see WLT 58:4, p. 667). As in the first two, the mode of narration is realistic. The quality of this surface realism is a product of acute intelligence, integrity, and imagination, the same qualities which enabled her to portray the life of the Parsi community with unflattering verisimilitude in The Crow Eaters and to which the conflict between the male-dominant values of the tribesmen and the people of the cities owes its power in The Bride. In the new work, however, the emphasis is not on representing phenomenal reality faithfully. The novel is an imaginative response to the traumatic events of the Partition...