This Other Salt

In this long-awaited second collection from Aamer Hussein, he continues and deepens his oblique, subversive portrayal of the preoccupations of our time: betrayal, bereavement, exile, belonging and the writer's role. In "This Other Salt" a writer, torn between two loves, looks for his lost words in the gap between memory, mourning and desire; in "The Lost Cantos of the Silken Tiger" a poet revenges herself on her faithless lover by turning their romance into a biblical legend; and in "The Blue Direction" a teenage boy's life uncannily begins to resemble the role he plays in a school operetta. Combining satire, legend, poetry, history and memoir, the linked stories of "This Other Salt" reveal an author of uncommon talent at the height of his craft.